

Decided to go all in this year and try to learn how to grow potatoes. I have a few methods going; vertical stacks with layered potatoes, the bucket method, and just regular in ground planting. I planted all of these the last week of March and the first week of april which was a gamble but I think it paid off as there were no late frosts. All of the planted potatoes got the same organic vegetable soil mix (Scott's? I'm unsure) as well as a heaping handful of mushroom manure. I layered them up as nicely as I could and separated the layers with straw. The straw had a bit of barley seed or something in it which sprouted and then died back pretty quickly.
For the vertical stacks and the buckets, I made the mistake of not labelling what I planted lol..They are a mix of kennebec, Yukon gold, norland, warba, and red Cristina. I am almost certain that the left stack is exclusively kennebec, with the right stack being a mix of the rest. The buckets I believe to be kennebec but they also could be Yukon gold, guess we will have to see!
I became obsessed with the explosion of growth recently out of the left stack and the buckets that I planted three more buckets but this time I used a pink fingerling variety. Please let me know of your potato growing experiences and let me know if there's something I can improve on or just educate me on why I need to be prepared to be disappointed lol. I am having a lot of fun learning the ways of the tubers!
by SwedishNutDrop

2 Comments
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Mine are going hard as well, BC brother. Basic grow bag method, my first time as well. Best of luck!
For the future, I’d recommend not mixing varieties in the same container unless they’re all varieties that have similar days to maturity. Mixing early, mid, and late/maincrop potato varieties together can make it difficult to harvest the earlies without harming the others.
Note also that fingerlings are generally late-mid varieties. Folks sometimes think that they should be faster to harvest because they’re so small, but they typically take 100-120 days, depending on the exact variety in question. Don’t be surprised if it seems to take longer for those newer buckets to get going.