Today is May 8th, 2020 and I have just harvested the first batch of potatoes that I planted in 5 gallon buckets.
This batch was planted using one whole seed potato in each bucket.
All 3 buckets grew beautiful plants very quickly. I made a few mistakes in the process such as not adding additional soil to the buckets fast enough and not adding more bone meal as the plants grew.
As a result the harvest wasn’t as big as I had hoped but it came out ok for my first attempt at growing potatoes.
Here are the potatoes from 5 gallon bucket #1:
Here are the potatoes from 5 gallon bucket #2:
Finally, here are the potatoes from 5 gallon bucket #3:
Bucket #3 produced the smallest quantity but also the biggest potatoes.
So the total for the 3 buckets was 4.45 pounds of potatoes. I was hoping to get between 2-3 pounds per bucket but I don’t think that I did to bad for my first attempt at growing potatoes.
I did not find any rotten potatoes in the harvest so I think my timing was pretty good overall.
It will be interesting to compare this harvest to the next one which is where I used seed potatoes cut into smaller pieces and put three seeds in each bucket.
So far the plants in those buckets are much fuller than the buckets where I used one whole potato seed. They also have held up better in the wind that we have had as spring storms have blown through.
