- 35 minutes ago
Grow huge potatoes in containers with a simple old-fashioned method that turns a bucket, tub, or barrel into a surprisingly productive potato harvest. The key is depth: start with a sprouted seed potato near the bottom, then keep adding soil as the stems grow so the buried stalk can keep forming more potatoes.
This gardening guide walks through the full container potato process, from choosing sprouted kitchen potatoes and preparing a deep pot with drainage holes to mixing rich soil, compost, and worm castings. It also covers proper spacing, regular watering, feeding with compost tea, and why green potatoes must stay out of the light. When the tops yellow, brown, and die back, harvest is easy—just tip out the container and collect the potatoes.
A practical small-space gardening tutorial for balcony gardeners, patio growers, backyard homesteaders, and anyone interested in growing food in pots. It is especially useful for container gardening, potato growing tips, DIY vegetable growing, and simple methods for producing more food with very little space.
SEO: container gardening, how to grow potatoes in containers, growing potatoes in buckets, potato growing guide, small space gardening, balcony gardening, patio gardening, vegetable gardening tips, growing food at home, and easy DIY gardening methods for a bigger potato harvest.
This gardening guide walks through the full container potato process, from choosing sprouted kitchen potatoes and preparing a deep pot with drainage holes to mixing rich soil, compost, and worm castings. It also covers proper spacing, regular watering, feeding with compost tea, and why green potatoes must stay out of the light. When the tops yellow, brown, and die back, harvest is easy—just tip out the container and collect the potatoes.
A practical small-space gardening tutorial for balcony gardeners, patio growers, backyard homesteaders, and anyone interested in growing food in pots. It is especially useful for container gardening, potato growing tips, DIY vegetable growing, and simple methods for producing more food with very little space.
SEO: container gardening, how to grow potatoes in containers, growing potatoes in buckets, potato growing guide, small space gardening, balcony gardening, patio gardening, vegetable gardening tips, growing food at home, and easy DIY gardening methods for a bigger potato harvest.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You do not need a garden to grow potatoes. You do not need a plot, nor a field, nor hardly
00:05any ground at all. Give me an old bucket on a balcony, and I will grow you a meal of
00:11potatoes
00:12out of it, a whole heap of them, from one sprouted potato you might have thrown away.
00:18Folk think you must have a big patch of earth to grow your own food, and it is not so.
00:23For
00:23the potato will grow you a fine crop in a container the size of a pail, on a porch,
00:28a step, a sunny corner, anywhere at all. Today I am going to show you the old easy way to
00:35grow a container full of potatoes, and the one trick that turns a little pail into a great
00:41pile of them. So keep up, for by the end you will look at every old bucket and tub about
00:46the place, and see a potato crop in it. I am Elias, and growing food in a pot for those
00:53who have no ground is a fine and useful thing. And the potato is about the best of all crops
00:59for it, generous and forgiving, so let me hand you the whole way of it.
01:04Quick word before I go further. The old methods my family uses, there is more of it than fits
01:10in any one video. I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the
01:17long version. If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again. My grandmother grew
01:23potatoes in a row of old half-barrels along the sunny side of the house, for the good ground was
01:29all given to the field crops, and folk marveled at the potatoes she pulled from those barrels.
01:35There is no such thing as no room to grow a potato, Elias, she would say, only a body who
01:42has not looked
01:42at his buckets right. She grew a winter's worth of them off that little row of barrels, and it taught
01:48me young that you need no field to feed yourself. So let me hand you her way of it. First,
01:55the seed
01:55potato, which is just a potato you plant to grow more. And the fine thing is, you need not buy
02:02special
02:02seed. You can use a potato from your own kitchen that has begun to sprout, the very ones folk throw
02:09out. In fact, a sprouted potato is exactly what you want, so do not throw out those old potatoes growing
02:16eyes in the bag. Plant them. And to give them a head start, green them and sprout them well first,
02:23what the old folk called chitting, just setting your seed potatoes in a bright cool place a week or two
02:29till they put out short, stout, green sprouts from their eyes. A small potato you plant whole,
02:35a big one you can cut into pieces, each with an eye or two, letting the cut pieces scab over
02:41a day
02:42before planting. So a sprouted kitchen potato, chitted in the light, is your free seed. Now the
02:49container, and here is the first thing that matters, it must be deep. For here is the whole secret of
02:55a
02:55big container crop, which I will come to, that potatoes form up along the buried stem. So the deeper you
03:02can
03:02bury that stem, the more potatoes you grow. So you want a good deep container, a bucket, a tub, a
03:09barrel,
03:10a big pail, a sack even. The deeper the better. A foot and a half or two feet deep is
03:16grand. And it must
03:18have holes in the bottom to drain. This is vital. So if your bucket has none, bore several good holes
03:25in the
03:25bottom. For a potato standing in waterlogged soil with no drainage rots away. So a deep container and
03:33good drainage holes bored in the bottom. That is your pot. Now the soil. For a container potato is fed
03:40only by what you put in that pot. So make it rich. You fill with a loose, light, rich soil,
03:47mixed well with
03:48plenty of good compost and old rotted manure. And if you have worm castings, that fine, dark, worm worked
03:55earth, mix in a good bit of that too. For it is among the richest, gentlest food there is, and
04:01the potato
04:02loves it. Loose and rich and light, so the potatoes can swell easy in it and feed well. A heavy
04:09packed, poor
04:10soil gives you a poor, knotty little crop. Now the planting. And here is where the deep container trick
04:16begins. So heat it. You do not fill the container up and plant on top. You put only a shallow
04:23layer of
04:23your soil in the bottom first, a few inches, and set your sprouted seed potato down on that, sprouts
04:31pointing up near the bottom of the container. And then you cover it over with just a few inches more
04:36soil
04:37and no more, leaving the container mostly empty still. So your potato starts down near the bottom
04:44under just a little soil, with the whole depth of the empty container waiting above it. Then you
04:51water it in and set it in the sun. And a word on how many to a container, for folk
04:57crowd them and get
04:59little. Do not put a whole crowd of seed potatoes in the one pail, thinking to grow more. For crowded,
05:06they starve and choke one another and give you a mess of tiny ones. One good seed potato to a
05:14bucket,
05:14or two or three to a big tub or barrel, well-spaced, is plenty, for each wants its room to
05:22make its column
05:22of crop. Few and well-spaced beats many and crowded every time. And set your container in a good sunny
05:31spot,
05:32for the tops want full sun to grow strong even as the roots stay dark, six hours and more of
05:39sun on the
05:40leaves. Now here is the trick, the whole secret of the great container crop, the earthing up. So mark
05:48this well, for it is the heart of the whole method. As your potato grows up and its green stem
05:55rises out of
05:56that shallow soil, you do not just let it grow. You keep adding more soil, burying the lower part of
06:04that rising stem again and again as it climbs. It grows up a few inches, you add a few inches
06:11of soil
06:12and compost around it, burying the stem, leaving just the top leaves showing. It grows up again,
06:19then you bury it again. And you keep at this, adding soil and burying the stem as it climbs until
06:27you have
06:28filled the whole deep container up to the top with soil and buried stem. And why does this grow you
06:35so
06:36many more potatoes? Because the potatoes form along that buried stem, all up and down it. So the more of
06:44the stem you bury by earthing up, the longer the stretch of stem making potatoes and the greater your
06:51crop. A potato planted shallow in a shallow pot makes potatoes along a few inches of stem. But one
07:00earthed up again and again up a deep container makes them along two feet of buried stem, a whole tall
07:08column of potatoes. That earthing up is the difference between a handful and a bucketful. So keep burying
07:17the stem as it grows and grow potatoes the whole depth of the pot. Now the light, and this is
07:24both a matter of
07:25the crop and of your safety, so heed it. Keep the light off your potatoes, always. A potato that grows
07:34up near the
07:34surface and catches the sunlight turns green, and that green on a potato is a sign of something in it
07:42that
07:42is not good to eat and can make you ill. So your earthing up does a double duty. It grows
07:49you more
07:50potatoes and it keeps them buried in the dark where they belong. So watch through the season, and any
07:57potato you see heaving up into the light at the top cover it back over. And never eat a green
08:05potato.
08:06Cut away any green part well or toss it. Keep them in the dark and keep them safe. Now the
08:14watering, and here
08:15is where most container potatoes are lost, so mind it close. A container dries out far faster than the open
08:24ground, for it is only that little bit of soil, and the sun bakes the pot from all sides. So
08:31a container
08:32potato wants watering often, more often than one in the ground, checking it daily in the heat, and never
08:40letting it go bone dry or the crop stalls and stays small. But here is the other side, and just
08:47as
08:48important, do not drown it either. For a potato sitting in constant sopping wet soil, especially
08:55with poor drainage, rots. So the aim is a steady, even moisture, damp but never waterlogged, which is
09:05why we bored those good drainage holes, so the extra runs away and it never sits in a swamp. Water
09:13it steady
09:13and even, often, but not to drowning, and it swells its crop well. Now feed it, for a container potato
09:21has
09:22only that pot full of soil to draw on, and is a hungry crop. So beyond the rich soil you
09:28gave it,
09:29give it a feeding now and again through the season. A drink of compost tea, or old manure tea, that
09:36rich
09:36brown brew of compost or rotted manure steeped in water, poured on to feed it as it grows. And here
09:43I will correct a thing you may see, for some folk will tell you to bury a whole raw egg
09:48down by the
09:49potato to feed it. Do not, for a raw egg buried in your pot just rots and stinks something awful,
09:57and draws the rats and the animals to dig your pot up after it, and it does the plant little
10:02good.
10:03If you want to give that good the honest way, it is crushed eggshells you want, not the whole egg,
10:09the shells washed and dried and crushed fine and worked into the soil, giving their calcium slow
10:16and clean with no stink and no diggers. So feed with compost tea and crushed eggshells, never a
10:24buried raw egg. Now the knowing when it is ready, for the plant tells you plain. You grow it on,
10:31earthed up
10:32and watered and fed, and in time, some two to three months, the tops, the green leafy plant above, will
10:40begin to yellow and then to brown and wither and flop over and die back. And that yellowing and dying
10:47back of the tops is your sign, for it means the plant has finished its work above and sent all
10:53its
10:53strength down into the potatoes below. When the tops have died down, your potatoes are ready, though you can
11:01sneak a few small tender new potatoes earlier by feeling gently down in the soil if you cannot wait.
11:07And now the harvest, and this is the pure joy of the container way, the easiest harvest in all of
11:15gardening, no digging, no spearing them with a fork. When the tops have died back, you simply take your
11:22container and tip the whole thing out, upend it onto a sheet or a barrow or the ground, and the
11:28whole
11:28column of soil tumbles out, and there through it, all up and down where that buried stem was,
11:35are your potatoes, clean and whole, and you just pick them out of the loose, tumbled soil by hand.
11:41From a good, deep, well-earthed up container, you will be astonished how many tumble out,
11:47a fine heap of them from the one pail. Tip it out, and gather your treasure. Now let me say
11:53a small,
11:54plain word, not a who-profits sermon, for a potato is no one's scheme. But notice what grew all this,
12:01an old bucket, a sprouted potato from your kitchen you would have thrown out, a fill of your own
12:07compost, and a bit of earthing up and watering. Not a scrap of ground needed, not a thing of any
12:14real
12:14cost, and out of it a heap of good food off a porch or a step. There is a whole
12:20notion that you must have
12:21land to grow your own food, that it is beyond the folk in the town with no plot, and it
12:27is simply
12:28not so, for a few buckets in a sunny corner will grow a body a real crop of potatoes. So
12:34folk come
12:35to think growing your own food wants a farm, when it wants a pail and a sprouted potato and a
12:41bit of
12:41knowing. That old thrift of growing real food in an old bucket where you have no ground is a fine
12:48and
12:48freeing thing, and mostly forgotten. So there is the old easy way to grow a container full of potatoes.
12:56Take a sprouted potato from your kitchen and chit it green in the light. Get a deep container,
13:02a bucket or tub, and bore good drainage holes in the bottom. Fill only a few inches of loose, rich,
13:09compost-fed soil and set your potato near the bottom. Then, as it grows, earth it up, burying the rising
13:17stem again and again till the whole deep pot is filled, for that is what grows you the great crop.
13:24Keep the light off the tubers, water it steady and even, and feed it with compost tea and crushed
13:30eggshells, never a buried raw egg. Wait for the tops to die back, then tip the whole pot out and
13:38gather
13:38your heap of potatoes. Do these, and from one old bucket and a sprouted potato, you will grow yourself a
13:45real
13:46meal of your own food, with never a foot of ground. Now I want to hear from you. Tell me
13:52down below
13:53whether you have tried growing potatoes in a bucket or a bag and how many you got from the one
13:58container,
13:58for it surprises folk how many a deep well-earthed pot will give. And tell me your county and whether
14:05you garden in the ground or all in pots for want of a plot, for the container way is a
14:10blessing to those
14:11with no ground. I read every one. Next time, I want to show you the storing of your potato harvest
14:18through the winter, the old way to cure them and keep them down cellar or in a box so they
14:23last firm
14:24and good for months and feed you clear to spring, for a potato stored wrong spoils fast and stored
14:31right keeps near the whole year. The old people grew food wherever they could, in the ground or in a
14:38pail or a barrel by the door, wasting no scrap of space nor a single sprouted potato, and so fed
14:44themselves from the smallest of corners with almost nothing bought. There is a quiet wisdom in that,
14:51in seeing a crop of food in an old bucket and a thrown away potato, in needing no acres to
14:56feed
14:57yourself, only a sunny corner and a bit of the old knowing. The people who built this country with
15:03their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.