As part of my foray into container gardening this year, I decided that it would be fun to try my hand at growing some potatoes. I’d done a fair amount of reading, and it seemed like growing potatoes in containers was pretty workable. I’d seen several examples of people growing them in old tires stacked 4 high, fencing towers stuffed with straw, and some much more elaborate wood sided towers that allowed for taking the bottom rung off and pulling potatoes out from under the plant.
The re-purposed container that we already had, potatoes already planted.
When it came time to plant my potatoes, I decided that for the first time around, I’d just use one of the larger containers that I already had laying around the yard. I’d previously used it to try and grow some flowers in, and while those turned out fine, some produce would be even better. I also found and picked up another container that I wanted to give a try with potatoes. It’s a bag made specifically for growing potatoes in, called, wait for it, Potato Planter. It’s kind of cool though. It’s made out of the same material that those blue tarps are made out of, and is designed with a velcro flap near the bottom of the bag to allow for you to open the bag and pull some potatoes out of the bottom while letting the rest of the potatoes grow near the top.
So, armed with my containers and a couple of bags of topsoil, I set about planting some potatoes!
After the plants have flowered, and the plant itself starts to yellow and die off, give the potatoes about a week to two weeks to mature, then harvest them. (This step and the ones following are purely from my research, and not from experience yet. I could be way off!)
When you harvest the potatoes, set them out in a warm, dry place to dry. This is supposed to allow the skins to harden up a bit for better storage. (One downside here is that the second the potato gets to a harvested state, the natural sugars in the potato begin converting to starch. I’ll be trying a few fresh from the ground and some that have been “hardened” and see how much of a difference there is.)
Repeat next year!
So far, I’ve gotten as far as planting, and adding soil to the potato containers. I’ve got one more batch of soil to add to the containers to fill them up with soil, then it’s just a waiting game as the plants grow potatoes and I wait for harvest time. This year is a bit of an experiment, as it’s our first year of dedicated container gardening, as well as the first time I’ve ever grown potatoes. Rather than add too many variables to the mix, I just planted some seed potatoes that I got from our local grocery store. If I recall, they were the Red Pontiac variety.
Next year, should this year be a success (and it’s looking like it will be), I would like to order some seed potatoes of different varieties. In particular, some purple potatoes. Mostly, just because I think they look cool! I’d like to try a few of the heritage/organic varieties too, and see if there’s much of a difference.
Have any of you ever successfully grown potatoes in your gardens or in containers? Got any hints or tips for me? Suggestions for varieties to grow next year?
I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
Ah, summertime. If you are a foodie, summertime brings so many food joys—fresh, ripe strawberries, juicy blueberries, crunchy asparagus. There are many food delights that are available in summer that aren’t available for most of the country for most of the year.
Sure, you can buy strawberries shipped in from a foreign country in January, but they are often devoid of taste and don’t taste nearly as good as those you can buy in June near your home.
Since there are likely farmers in your area who grow the seasonal produce you crave, why not take a trip out to the farm to pick some of the produce on your own? Taking such a trip is a great way to spend time together as a family, plus you benefit both nutritionally and financially. Not only will you get to enjoy produce at the peak of ripeness, but you will also likely save substantially by buying at the farm. An added bonus is that your kids will more likely enjoy eating the produce and learning how it grows.
We recently went as a family to an organic strawberry farm near our home. None of us had ever picked strawberries before, and we didn’t know that strawberries got there name from the straw surrounding the berries so they don’t sit on the ground but the straw instead. We picked 7.5 pounds, bought 10 pounds and bought another 27 pounds of seconds (berries not pretty enough to sell for the full asking price). We spent approximately $91 for our haul (about $2.00 a pound which is a great price for organic strawberries), and froze 4 large bags of strawberries and made 21 pints of jam. The kids still talk about the experience, and now they are more educated about how strawberries grow (as are we).
If you would like to look for a farm in your area, try localharvest.org for organic farmers or farmvisit.com. If you use farmvisit.com, you can choose between organic and conventional farmers.
If you do not regularly visit farms to pick your fruits and veggies, here are some tips:
Call the farm ahead of time. The farmer can let you know picking conditions as well as when the busiest times are and the quietest times. We always try to plan our visits around the quiet times because it is easier with small kids.
Bring your own containers. Farmers may have large containers for you to take your produce home in, but you will usually have to pay for them. Bring your own containers instead and save the money. Use cardboard boxes or even large pots and pans.
Bring plenty of water and sunscreen. Picking produce makes you hot, so bring plenty of water as well as sunscreen to prevent a burn.
Bring a lunch. If you will be picking for awhile or will have a drive a distance to get out to the farm, bring your lunch with you so you can have a picnic or eat while traveling.
Wear appropriate shoes and clothes. Tennis shoes are usually best, and wear sloppy clothes because you will probably get dirty.
Have a plan for what to do with your produce. Decide ahead of time if you will only pick enough to eat right away or if you plan to preserve some of it by freezing or canning it. If you are canning it, going to the farm is just the first step to a long (but worthwhile) day of picking and preserving.
A trip to the farm can be a great experience for your kids and save you money on fresh produce picked at the peak of ripeness. If you go a step further and freeze or can some of the produce you pick, you can enjoy local fruit at a great price all year long, straight from your stockpile.
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
Not content to upset the recyclers in the community (See: Is Recycling Bullshit), I’m moving on to electric cars today. Rob at Say Anything Blog had an interesting post the other day citing a report from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville that talks about how electric cars might be worse for the environment than their gas guzzling counterparts.
To summarize the report, electric cars seem to be more hazardous to the environment because a majority of the electricity that they consume is created in fossil fuel burning electric plants. Rob points out that the study was done in China where a very large proportion of electricity is produced by coal powered plants, and that a smaller proportion is produced that way in the Unites States, but that the proportion still isn’t small enough to negate the negative effects of the increased pollution from production.
I think this is another case where the technology just isn’t advanced enough to support the new initiatives. Cleaner electricity production would, obviously, help the situation, but many of the clean energy production methods just aren’t mature enough to support themselves, let alone a growing fleet of electric cars.
Combine that information with the added expenses in maintenance of an electric car, and they begin to look downright unattractive. Not to mention that they have yet to create an electric car that is capable of reproducing the power that is needed for them to become mainstream in smaller cities and rural areas.
What do you think? Are electric cars an already dying breed? Should we continue to support them in hopes that electricity production technology catches up eventually?
I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
