Crop guide · Vegetables
How to grow potatoes in containers: bucket method, grow bags, and when to stop hilling
Highest yield per pot on this site. Which varieties, 10-gallon minimum, and the one hilling mistake that halves your harvest.
- Container
- 10 gal min
- Three seed potatoes per bag, no more
- Sun
- Full sun
- 6+ hours or the tubers stay marble-sized
- Water
- Steady
- Dry spells at flowering cost you the crop
- First harvest
- 90 days
- Earlies in 70, maincrop nearer 110
Potatoes are the best value in a container, full stop. Three seed potatoes, a 10-gallon grow bag and about $12 of mix will give you five or six pounds — more weight per pot than anything else on this site, and you harvest by tipping the bag onto a tarp instead of digging.
The size is the part people get wrong. A 5-gallon bucket grows one plant badly; 10 gallons grows three properly. Start with four inches of mix, sit the chitted seed potatoes on it eyes up, cover with another four, and then hill — add mix as the shoots grow — until the bag is full. Stop hilling once the plant flowers. Everything after that is the plant filling out the tubers it has already set, and burying more stem at that point just costs you leaves.
Full write-up coming: variety picks for containers, the bucket-versus-grow-bag comparison, and what scab and blight actually look like at week eight.
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About the author
Carsten
I grow food on a 4×6 balcony and write down what works. Not a master gardener, not sponsored. When a guide is wrong I fix it and note the date at the top. Questions, corrections and photos of your pots are welcome. say hello.