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Don't Throw Away Potato Peels - Plant Them Instead!
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Don’t Throw Away Potato Peels – Plant Them Instead!



In this video, I show you how to grow potatoes from potato peels or skins by turning kitchen waste into flourishing potato plants for you to eat for free!

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0:00 Introduction
0:32 Why Grow Potatoes from Peels?
0:58 Step 1 – Save the Potato Peels
1:21 Bury Peels in the Garden
2:55 Tips for Watering
4:00 Harvest the Potatoes
7:17 Seed Potatoes
9:28 Extra Tip of Success
10:08 Amazing Conclusion

Good day. I’m Mark from Self-Sufficient Me. And did you know you can grow a whole new crop of potatoes from just potato peels? It’s true. And in this video, I’m going to show you how to turn everyday kitchen scraps into a thriving potato harvest. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s fun. And it helps to reduce food waste. Let’s get into it. [Music] So firstly, why would you want to grow potatoes from potato peels? Well, it saves money. You don’t have to buy potato seed from the nursery, which can be quite expensive. It’s a great way to teach kids about gardening and become more self-sufficient. It helps you to reduce food waste and live more sustainably. And it’s just great for experimentation because through experimenting in the garden, you do learn heaps. Now, the first thing you do is you’ve got to get some potato peels. So, I was doing up a roast. It was some desire potatoes. I just peeled them like normal. It was a pork roast, by the way. Very nice in the end. And the potatoes were fantastic as well. So, I just kept those peels. And then the next day, while they were still fresh, you don’t want them to dry out. I then brought them out here to the garden and I found a place. It could be a container with potting mix or it could be a little place in the garden like I have here. Somewhere where it’s not going to get shaded out too much. Somewhere in plenty of sunlight and of course with enough space that you’re going to have a couple of potato plants hopefully grow out of those peels. I then removed the mulch because I did have some mulch here. And then all you need to do is not necessarily dig a hole, but just disturb the top of the soil just enough so that you can sprinkle a layer of those potato peels down evenly across the surface. In this case, it was about probably a foot and a half wide. And then what I did was simply cover that back over with a thin amount of soil. And I mean no more than about 2 cm or an inch because it’s not like burying a seed potato where that seed potato has all that energy to be able to pump that foliage up through several inches of soil and then start growing. A potato peel won’t have a lot of energy in it to start sprouting. So you don’t want it to try to come from too far down below the surface. Having said that, I also did cover it with a thin layer of this mulch. It’s sugarcane mulch, but it could be anything. You don’t want anything too heavy, like wood chip, for example, that would just probably rot those potato skins. So, if you’re going to use something, make it light, like sugarcane mulch or straw or grass clippings, but not too thick. And then the last thing I did was just give it a nice little water in. Keep it damp then for the next several weeks or at least a month. And then you should start seeing some sprouting potato plants coming up. It is important to keep that water up because if you don’t, the potato pills will likely dry out and shrivel and die. But the other thing is you don’t want to water this constantly either and make that soil too wet because that could possibly start rotting those potato peels and then just letting them break down into a mush. So, you want to water it like you’re raising seedlings, just a little, keep it damp, but not wet. Once you see those plants come through, you want to then just keep the water up to it as you would normally water any vegetables. If you like, if you see them struggling a bit, you could add a little extra fertilizer around them. Give them a bit of a seaweed water in, anything like that, some supplements to make those plants grow stronger. And then after about 2 to 3 months, maybe even a little bit less, you’ll see that the plants will start to die off. And that’s why you can’t see much here now because they are effectively dead. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to grab a little hand fork and we’re going to dig this up and see just how well our potatoes grew underneath the soil from potato skins. Fingers crossed. Okay, I’ve got you on an overhead shot here for a good view of these spuds. So, I’ll remove the mulch. And look at that. We’re already revealing some spuds there. Here we go. They’re not big, but there you go. That one’s all right. Check them out. What I’ll do is I’ll put them in a little pile just over here. Oh, maybe we might have had a mouse digging some of these up already. There. It looks like there’s a few being gnawed on slightly, but that’s not a problem. Stick them there. And we’ll keep going. There’s the old potato plant. Very interesting how it’s growing tubers off the stems there. Just small ones. I wonder if we’re going to find any deeper down. Lots of small ones. Okay, now let’s dig down a bit. See if any got deeper. There you go. Look at that one. Interesting. That’s starting to sprout. Look at that. See that sprouting? That’s not a bad thing. There’s another decent one. Okay. That there is our harvest. Now, I’m pretty happy with this. You could eat these. And I know what you’re thinking, Mark. Well, that’s a little bit of a small feed, especially say for our family, a family of four. And you’re right. So, I probably wouldn’t. But hey, remember where we started. We started from potato peels. We started from kitchen waste. And now we’ve got small potatoes. What do they remind you of? Especially these nicesized ones here. They’re they’re sea potatoes. I’ve probably got at least half a kilo of seed potatoes here. At least, maybe more. Now with these seed potatoes, I can replant them. One or two are already sprouting and they will grow into a bigger crop. Now, why does this work? Well, first of all, you have a better seed quality. The small potatoes are now fully formed tubers with more stored energy than a thin peel. So, this gives them a head start when they’re replanted, just like a traditional seed potato. Like I said at the beginning, buying certified seed potatoes at the beginning of each season can get expensive. By using your first generation peel potatoes, you’re going to save on buying seed, and you’re going to be more sustainable overall, reducing waste. These potatoes here have been grown as babies from your own garden, your soil, your climate, which means they are already adapting to your conditions in your own microclimate and larger climate and backyard soil type and all that, which means you’re going to build a resilient, often better type of potato by using your recurring crops. In other words, this is like a two-stage growing system. Your first stage is getting your peels and your waste, letting them grow into your seed potatoes, and your second stage is using these seed potatoes. Planting them out like regular seed potatoes and getting your main crop after that. Getting something for nothing is always great. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to grab these potatoes here and I’m going to plant them out in their own garden bed and we’ll see if we can get a much bigger and better formed crop. I reckon we can and I’ll bring you that video in about 3 months time. Oh, one thing that I did forget to mention and that is it does help if your potato peels do have a few eyes in them. I didn’t really check if mine did. I’m pretty sure there are a few small eyes that I just peeled. I didn’t try to dig out any extra potato or dig the eyes out and plant them. I just peeled the potatoes like normal. But if there are already some small eyes forming on that potato, you could get more success and definitely get easier seedling growth from those eyes that are situated on the peels when you put them out into the garden. So, let me know what you think. If you go down in the comments section, I guarantee you’ll have people saying, “This has happened to me by accident. They’ve thrown their potato peels into the compost and then they’ve noticed potato plants coming up and growing.” And I have to admit, that’s kind of where I got my idea from, too, to do a video on growing potatoes through potato peels. So, next time you’re having potatoes for dinner, save those peels and stick them out into the garden and grow your own potatoes. Well, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, make sure you give it a big thumbs up. Also, subscribe. But more than that, these days, it’s getting really hard to reach the subscriber base, even if you’re a big channel like mine. YouTube is not paying as much attention to your subscriber base as they used to. And so, the only real way that you can see my videos when they come out and get notified of them is to click that bell and get those notifications. That would help me a lot. And also share this video around if you found it helpful. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye for now. Cheers.

42 Comments

  5. @vickikelsey7507

    If I lived someplace where it rained pretty regularly it would be worth it, but for the amount of water I would need to give it out here in the desert, I'm better off putting the peels to the chickens or in the compost pile and using the water to get a full crop of potatoes instead. I do like those little potatoes when I make a Yankee Pot roast in my little pressure cooker, but that still doesn't make the water usage worth it for me out in the high desert.

  6. @beardlyinteresting

    Wow it's funny I'd actually found some potato plants that had sprouted from peels earlier today in my garden and now this video shows up.

  11. @Lozyloza1

    Hi Mark from QLD, may I start with, I've been a Subbie now for at least 3years or more now & thoroughly enjoy your videos. You have such great knowledge & information, so I would love to thank you for your time and effort that you provide for US. SO, THANK YOU. I just purchased your book of knowledge
    I do have a question for you; do you know of the banana skin & or onion skin fertilizer? Also have you ever tried them & if you had I would love to know your view on the topic.
    I've always used potato pieces with eyes on them just like sweet potato but i will be giving this a go for sure, thanks for the tips.

  14. @sunayakong8537

    OMG, that why I have potato plants coming up every where. I put my potato peels in different places now I have to go dig up potatoes everywhere.

  26. @Billystassieadventures

    I started a new garden bed around 1×3 meters anyways I filled with grass clippings only. I messed up I didn't stir the first few loads in but over the time it filled up dryed out n kept layering it. Anyways I added peeling only n I was surprised they grew l. So I got a bit excited when it cost me absolute nothing besides the fuel for the mower… The tin sheets were free and the pallet Wood was free ….m I ended up with around 10kg of potatoes just from that bed

  27. @rodneycampbell2978

    And this is a way to get the variety you like, I have gone back the next year to buy my seed potatoes and they don'e carry them any more.

  29. @rrosario4657

    I would like you to know I appreciate you. I appreciate all the hard work behind the content and in the fields 😊.

  31. @khills

    Huh. HUH.

    Also, looking forward to spending a bunch of time going thru your back catalog as I prepare to learn how to garden down unda…. Hear it’s gonna be slightly different than my American experience. 😊

  35. @TheEllenikProject

    No way! That's awesome. Judging by the comments, many people were already aware of this, but it's new to me. Great day, learned something new!

  36. @bowtielife

    OH MY GOODNESS!!! I’d heard of this but never saw such results!! I am definitely going to try this on our next harvest!!! I am blown away!🎉😮🎉

  38. @kapstersmusic

    After years of trial and error, I have found that using chitted, whole, certified seed potatoes is the way that I yield the biggest, cleanest potatoes at harvest time. I got tired of dealing with buckets of golf ball sized potatoes. I want the hugest potatoes possible, or I won't grow any. Especially if you get a few blemishes, peeling a couple of big potatoes is way less labor intensive than peeling tiny spuds.

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