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All summer residents and gardeners are trying to grow potatoes on their own plot in order to get a healthy, environmentally friendly and tasty product. In addition to the traditional methods of growing root crops, unusual ones are also used in small areas, for example, growing potatoes in bags.
The essence of the method
This method is applicable in small home gardens or summer cottages, the soil on which is unproductive.
Planting begins in May with the establishment of warm weather. For planting potatoes in bags, take plastic bags, seeds of early varieties of potatoes, manure and earth. As humus, rotted leaves, dust, manure, sawdust are used. Any land is suitable (chernozem, yellow sand, a small amount of clay to retain moisture).
To grow potatoes in bags, you can not take the land on which solanaceous grew: tobacco, pepper, eggplant, tomatoes, etc. Such a precaution is necessary so that late blight and other viral diseases and their pathogens do not spread. You can not take land and manure from those places where the bear lives.
The bags are half-tucked, humus is poured up to 40 cm, potatoes are laid out (no more than 5-6 pieces), covered with earth and watered. Lay out another layer of potatoes and cover with a small (up to 15 cm) layer of humus. Seedlings should appear in a week or two. The sprouts fall asleep again and do this until the bag is 2/3 full.
After that, bags of potatoes are placed in a well-lit place that is available for irrigation: near the house, near the fence on the sunny side, along garden paths.
The moisture from the bags evaporates quickly, so plantings need to be watered regularly.
There is another way to grow potatoes in bags. This technology differs from the first method not very much.
For growing potatoes, they take special bags with holes in the bottom, designed for 1 nest of tubers and a yield of up to 4 kg when planting 4-5 tubers. Up to 40 liters of fertile mixture are placed in these containers. The height of such a bag is 45 cm, the diameter is 36 cm, there are handles on the sides to make it convenient to carry to another place, and valves that can be opened after watering to allow air to reach the roots.
A mixture of earth, humus and peat is poured into the bag to a height of 10 cm. The tubers are laid out with “eyes” up and watered. After the sprouts grow to 7 cm, they are covered with the same mixture so that only the tips of the leaves are visible. Then water and repeat the procedure until 10-15 centimeters remain to the top edge of the container.
You can get a crop of early potatoes without much hassle in this way. The bag is filled with a nutrient mixture (earth with humus), tied, laid on the ground and cross-shaped cuts are made on it. Sprouted tubers or seedlings are planted in them. First, the bags are placed in a warm place, and then, with the establishment of warm weather, they are taken out for hardening. When there is no threat of frost, they are taken out to a permanent place. With this technology, the soil is periodically moistened. The most positive thing in this case is the absence of weeds. And the crop ripens much earlier than with conventional planting.
Instead of bags, you can use barrels, boxes, boxes or other similar containers up to 50-60 cm high. In this case, many holes up to 2 cm in diameter are made in the side walls of the container, and the bottom is removed. A layer of earth and humus is poured into the barrel to a height of up to 10 cm, potato tubers are laid out at a distance of 20 cm from one another, sprinkled with a layer of earth (up to 10 cm), watered. After the appearance of sprouts, they are sprinkled and this operation is performed until the barrel is filled to the very top.
Potatoes in barrels are grown using almost the same technology as in narrow beds. That is, the barrel should not be very high, and the ground level in it should be 20 cm below its sides. The tubers are placed at a depth of 5 cm and sprinkled with straw (layer height 10 cm). when the sprouts grow to 50 cm, they are laid out in rays and sprinkled with earth.
Growing super crops will allow vertical beds in plastic bags. On such beds, domestic varieties are usually cultivated (Nadezhnaya, Svitanok Kyiv, Slavyanka, Molodezhnaya), the German variety Bellarosa, the Dutch Shante.
Advantages and disadvantages of the method
Growing potatoes in bags has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include the following:
- planting care is simplified: there is no need to loosen the ground, weed and hill the plants;
- there is significant savings on arable land: when planting and harvesting, there is no need to dig or plow the land;
- potatoes do not rot: water in bags or other containers does not stagnate;
- no need to fight weeds, late blight and various pests – the Colorado potato beetle, bear and others;
- landings of this type do not need much space: the bags are located on a minimum area;
- the humus formed after growing potatoes in bags can be used to fertilize other crops (except strawberries and tomatoes).
Growing potatoes in vertical beds will save time and effort. This technology is suitable for those who know how to manage their money and time. Using drip irrigation, you will not even need to monitor soil moisture.
Growing on a warm vertical bed
There are many positives, but there are also negatives:
- with this technology of planting potatoes, a lot of humus is needed;
- soil moisture must be constantly monitored;
- you will have to move a lot of earth to fill the bags, and then find a place where to scatter it;
- if you grow potatoes in large quantities, then you will need to purchase bags.
Therefore, this method is more suitable for small areas where the soil is not suitable for potatoes, or areas affected by the bear.
Testimonials from truck drivers
Summer residents and gardeners are ambivalent about such methods of growing potatoes. Reviews are radically different: some praise such technologies, share secrets on how to grow potatoes in bags, and recommend trying all the ways. It is possible that these people know some special secrets or use special preparations – growth stimulants.
Perhaps there are some special tricks. For example, some potato growers use a hose that is perforated along its entire length and plugged at one end to deliver water and air to the roots of the plants. In a barrel, it is laid in a spiral and air is pumped into it or connected to a water supply system.
Other potato growers believe that this is a waste of time, effort and money. Their experience of growing potatoes in bags turned out to be unsuccessful: there were few potatoes, and they were very small, but there was a lot of fuss. Some try to explain the reasons for the failures, believing that the plant does not have enough strength to grow fruits, as it is constantly growing up and trying to get out of the ground.
There are opinions that potatoes do not bear fruit in the lower tiers, but form them only in the upper layer. Some gardeners say that the potatoes planted in this way did not even begin to bloom and withered already in July.
Someone believes that the roots of potatoes planted in a barrel will not receive enough oxygen, since the earth in it will be dense, and therefore tubers will not form.
In the reviews, potato growers also talk about the maximum load on the plant: despite all efforts, one potato tuber will not be able to produce more than a certain limit during the growing season. And even if a lot of tubers are tied up on a long stem, which is being dug all the time, it is possible that the plant simply does not have enough strength to “feed” all the fruits to a normal size.
It is worth paying attention to the opinions of those summer residents who believe that the plant will not have enough strength or time to form a large number of good tubers, since the entire vegetation resource is spent on stem growth.
In general, in order to form an opinion on the feasibility of a particular technology, you need to try and experiment. There are no special additional costs, and it will take no more time than growing potatoes in the traditional way. Try it, and suddenly you will be able to get a great potato crop in your area. Then you will know exactly how best to grow potatoes – the old fashioned way or in bags.
Video “How to grow potatoes in a bag”
In the video, an experienced gardener tells how he grows potatoes in bags: the procedure, the advantages of the method, harvesting.
