Container Gardening: How to Grow Bountiful Main Crop Potatoes!

Container Gardening: How to Grow Bountiful Main Crop Potatoes!

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Vitax Potato Fertiliser – https://amzn.to/49ROQUN
Fish, Blood and Bone Fertiliser – https://amzn.to/4aKOpNo
10 x 30L Containers For Potatoes – https://amzn.to/4aKpY2z
Seed Potatoes – https://www.potatohouse.co.uk/

GrownLocal – https://grownlocal.co.uk/ref/marksallotmentplot

In this video, learn all about successfully growing main crop potatoes in containers! We’ll cover the best container types, soil mixtures, planting techniques, and care tips to help you harvest a bountiful potato crop right from your own patio or balcony. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced gardener, join us as we explore this efficient and rewarding way to grow potatoes in limited space. Don’t miss out on this essential guide to container gardening with potatoes!

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it’s the middle of April it’s probably about time we got the main cropped potatoes on the go and this year I have decided I’m doing all my potatoes and buckets now traditionally I have only done probably the first early second earli in the buckets any sort of main crop have gone in the ground I’ve got a bed over there behind the camera that you can’t see at the moment had a big long bed that I grew far too many potatoes in and since then I’ve sort of rationalized it and changed the space and using it for different things but this year decided I’m only doing potatoes in buckets cuz it’s so much easier but we’re going to do it two different ways using the buckets we’re going to try two different things we’ve got a bit of an experiment going on and let me let me show you what I’ve got here first of all and I bring these up to the camera a little bit closer and you can see them so these are two different types of potatoes here these have been chitting for quite a while you can see them there these ones on this side along here they’re heidy red and these ones along here are King Edwards the King Edwards the ones I’m going to do this bit of experiment with and let me select one of these seed potatoes in particular so when you chit them and you can see them there we’ve got lots of little chits coming off there’s some that aren’t quite as big over there but you can see the two big ones on the top there Chuck them in the bucket those chits off they’re going to go going to go going to grow going to get potatoes and we’re going to get quite a lot of potatoes now the problem with that is in the buckets obviously these buckets here they’re 30 L it can be quite tight on space now last year when I’ve done these in the buckets the main croppers I think it’s only once and that’s when I I faffed on we got some massive one so kind of learning from that and I’ve seen Tony O’Neil do this as well at simplified gardening and that is we’re going to we’re going to put in one of the buckets we’re going to leave them like this with all the chits in and we’ll put them in I’ll take you through planting them in a in a bit there but this one here is a is a really good example come here now you see how there’s two chits on the top there which are quite nicely spaced and there’s a smaller one here and a smaller one there and there’s another one round there I’m going to cut the seed potato in half so we’re going to come right down the middle there and on one side of the seed potato we’ll have one two probably two chits and on the other side of the seed potato we’ll have three in theory I should be able to space that out in the bucket so each sort of section of the seed potato we’re going to plant it as if it was a single seed potato so we going to give lots of room lots of space hopefully to grow and create nice big chunky Jack of potatoes anyway enough of me waffling on I’m just going to get set up a little bit more around here we’ll come back and we’ll see about getting these chopped up and planted in the buckets so first things first let’s start getting some compost into the bucket now in this in this compost like I say I’ve used it before there’s little bits of potato skinning it from old seed potatoes there’s bit of root and stuff like that from what’s been grown in there but that’s fine potatoes are pretty pretty robust you know they they don’t mind a bit a bit of roughage like that in the in the soil anything I will do I generally look for any little weeds that might have started growing at this time of year but I’m going to fill that 10 to 12ish sort of handfuls let me show you a little bit close that’s about how much compost I put in that bucket just to start as off and I’m going to mix two different things in there this one here is VX potato and vegetable fertilizer and it’s stinks to high heaven it’s like the most concentrated manure you’ve ever smelled and I’m just going to give that a bit of a Sprinkle maybe it’s about I don’t know half a handful in there and again the same with the fish Blood and Bone once it’s in there we’re going to give it a good old mix up and all S’s doing is any nutrition that’s come out that compost from the previous years we’re just putting that back in next let’s get our seed potato and our knife and see what we’re going to do here so I’m very let me just bring up here I’m very delicately so a chit here in this here so I’m going to have to come sort of diagonally what I don’t want to do is damage them or cut through them now in an Ideal World what you would do is once you’ve cut them open it’s you leave them to cure you just leave them sitting out somewhere let them dry out a little bit the risk cuz I can control them the risk of these actually rotten or getting something in them is pretty pretty small let’s get this in so what I’m going to do take this one and I like to use the handles and the buckets to to help me remember where put the seed potatoes so we just going to pop that one first of all in the bucket and let me just lay that down in there and I’m going to take what let me just gently put some compost on top of that seed potato there so that keeps that in Sp in in place so it’s not going to topple over or move about to know exactly where it is so I’ve put two double handfuls of compost in there another sprinkle of the potato specific fertilizer another sort of half a handful of the fish Blood and Bone I’m just going to mix that in half a seed potato and I’m going to put this at the opposite handle and because we’ve now got that layer of nutrition in there as well hopefully the second seed potato is going to feed off that and the Bottom seed potato it’s going to feed off that bottom but let me just show you the vacuum gentle there so it doesn’t doesn’t tip over hopefully you can see there how it’s looking and then once I’ve done that it is literally just a case of scooping up again that first one being gentle going in to keep keep the uh keep the seed potato in place cuz we don’t want it going a bit crazy but all over the place they should have pretty much the most amount of room in one of these buckets that they can have and I’m going to top it up to pretty much there so you can see it there near enough to the top and it’s as easy as that and one thing I must do that I am terrible for but I have written out some little seed potatoes look we’ve got here King Edwards and these are planted on the 21st of the 4th and I’ve got half experiment on there so I know that they’re the the half seed potatoes and that’s our experimental tub and I’ve got my other other one here for the second batch of seed potatoes which we’ll get on with in just a jiffy I’ve already made a bit of a head start so we’ve got our first layer in there doing exactly the same as the other bucket even though we’re going to plant this one up slightly differently the way we’re going to do it in terms of the layers and things like that is exactly the same and let me pick another one of our King Edwards again looking looking good nice big chunky seed potatoes but we’re just going to pop that one in on the one layer and like I said this this one is going to be slightly different in the way we do it but again we’re going in nice and gentle on top of that first sort of seed potato there in the bucket just so it’s not getting knocked and nudged and again I’ve put it Opposite the handle and it’s probably even more important when we’re doing it this way cuz we’re going to just push the boundaries of space in terms of the what we can fit in the bucket and we but what I’m going to do with this one because we’re putting more seed potatoes in here imagine if you imagine right we’ve put this here say this is this is what 12:00 on the bucket I’m probably going to come round to about four or five o’ with the second potato and once it’s there we’re just going to again a little bit on top keeping it in place being even though the nice nice big sort of chunky seed potatoes we’re still going to be a little bit delicate to begin with so there we go we’ve got two layers in there now so for the third layer again sprinkle of that oh off a handful of this when I’m doing that in the bucket I’m literally just running my fingers over the top of the compost and it’s just mixing into the compost so if we’ve done that one at 12:00 that one let me get the right seed potato there we go that one at 12:00 that one around about 4 or 5:00 I’m probably going to put this one in at around about 8:00 so again that’s trying to maximize the space inside the bucket you know we’ve got them as far apart as you possibly can hand from each other cuz obviously they’re going to be constrained as to how far they can grow out whereas under the ground they can pretty much go where they want and do where they want quite contained quite constrained hopefully maximize the space so all need to do with this top that up to the top like I did with the other one and that’s it done so I’ll get that done and I’ll come back to you in just a jiffy so let’s go and have a little look at how things are looking so we’ve got the two buckets over here that have been planted up here they are they look pretty much identical here’s all the other bits and pieces that I’ve been using while I’ve been doing this but we’ve got our one here this has got a half potato in it we’ve got our wand here this has got three full SE seed potatoes in there you can see they’re almost identical as always with these things I’ll pop a link Down Below in the description you can go and have a look you can see the seed potatoes of used the nutrition the buckets all that sort of stuff I don’t keep any of that stuff secret nothing gets hidden away around here you can see everything that I’ve been up to so there’s only one one thing left to do I guess and that is to to see how they turn out and you know it’s going to be a good few months so why not think about subscribing if you subscribe you will get a little notification that comes back and tells you when these are ready and we can have a good look inside the bucket is probably September sort of time I reckon to see whether the one single sweet potato that we chopped in half whether that does grow a nice big Jack of potato siiz potatoes and whether the want in the bucket where we’ve got three Single Seed Potatoes and they’re all sort of lay up on those different layers whether they give us lots of potatoes orbe it probably a little bit smaller given the size of the buckets anyway these are going to go off into the poly tunn like I see up here in Scotland it’s just a still a little bit of a risk of it being too cold wherever you are in the world you’re probably okayish unless it’s really cold obviously if it’s freezing don’t do it you could probably leave them outside now they’ll not come to any harm the real risk with the potatoes there is when the Shores come up so when those green tops come up and the Frost gets to them that’s when you get a problem when the sea potatoes are tucked away nice and warm inside the compost there if there’s a light frost the likelihood is they’ll be okay I’m just fortunate that I’ve got the poly tunnel here so I’m going to move them inside into the poly tunnel they’ll be in there a couple of weeks you know maybe three to four weeks before they come out cuz the tomatoes the Cucumbers the chilies and stuff will be going in there anyway and they’ll come outside and they’ll be absolutely smashing anyway that’s me done thank you for watching and I’ll see you on the next one bye for now folks