Growing Potatoes in Buckets
This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting 7Savings.com so I can continue to provide you free content each week! You guys are amazing!
Growing potatoes in buckets is an easy way to grow potatoes if you don’t have a garden or your garden does not have good soil. growing potatoes in buckets help you grow potatoes in balconies, rooftops, greenhouse, and many other areas.
Want to grow potatoes? We can help you with that! The taste and the texture of home-grown varieties of potatoes are much better than those bought at the store. There are a lot of different but whatever Variety or varieties you want to grow.
They all have the same growing method. Potatoes like cool weather and well-drained, loose soil so that the roots can easily penetrate the soil bucket or container.
planting in a 5-gallon bucket is the same. growing in a container requires a little different type of soil. you cannot just grab some soil from your garden and put in a bucket.
Container or bucket gardening requires potting soil, you can buy potting soil from garden centers or you can make your own and save money. Read my post on how to make potting soil.
How to grow potatoes in a bucket.
Get a Bucket
Get a food grade 5-gallon bucket (larger is better). you can buy it at the store or you can get it for free from bakeries or restaurants. With a good harvest, a 5-gallon bucket might give you between 1 to 4 pounds of potatoes.
Put a few holes at the bottom of the bucket
Put a few holes (5 to 9) at or close to the bottom of the bucket for drainage, You don’t want water standing in you potato container. The potatoes might not do well or worse the good ones might rot. You can use a drill, a hot gun or any other tool available to you to make the holes.
Get potting mix
Put together your potting mix or buy potting mix, potting mix is better for containers because it is loose, it allows for quick drainage and it has most of the nutrients needed for plant growth. Save money by making your own potting mix by combining compost, peat moss and perlite. Read my post about making your own potting mix.
Add potting mix
Fill a quarter to half the bucket with your potting mix.
Add fertilizer (I prefer organic)
I usually add about 2 tablespoons of Garden-tone organic fertilizer and 2 tablespoons of blood meal to the mixture and mix it before I plant in it.
Plant your seeds
Dig a little hole in the potting mix and plant your potato seeds or place your potato seed on the potting mix in the bucket and add a little bit of potting mix on top until the seed is completely covered.this should bring the potting mix to about half the container.
Water the container
Water the containerWater the potting mix and seed in the container thoroughly and set the bucket in a sunny spot. Within a week or two, the potato seed will germinate and start growing.
Add More Potting Mix
Once the potato plant is at or above the rim of the bucket add more potting mix to fill up the container up to about 1.5 to 2 inches from the rim of the bucket. This will help hold rain Water or any water you use to water the container. It holes the water there before it drains down to the roots and any excess will come out of the holes at the bottom.
Mulch your container
This is all up to you some people do while others don’t do it. You can mulch the top 2 inches of your container to prevent weed and also lock in some moisture in the container. You can use regular mulch, grass clippings or leaves to cover the top of the container.
Potato Care and Maintenance
It is very easy to Care and Maintain potato plants, You just have to water a few times a week depending on rainfall and the temperature. usually, 4 times a week is good
Feed the plant liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks. I usually feed mine compost tea every two weeks. Read my post on how to make your own compost tea.
