Potato Poppin

Going grocery shopping, I am always wooed by potatoes.  I don’t know if it is my Midwestern roots with my parents being from Iowa and Ohio, or the fact that eastern Europeans tend to LOVE meat and potatoes.  What kind of German/Lithuanian would I be if I didn’t love a good starch.

But it is inevitable that I can’t use all the potatoes before they go bad.  And back in March, I was faced with the same dilemma. I had bought a bag of precious fingerling potatoes, intending to saute them in a bit of butter.  But by the time I got around to eating them, they had gone to sprout. Another few dollars of food waste.

I was standing in front of the sink, holding the bag of sprouted potatoes, silently cursing myself for being wasteful, when a thought dawned on me. What would happen if I planted them?  Would I get a whole batch of potatoes?

In minutes, I was surfing the interwebs, hunting for a way to seek a better return on my potato purchase.  And lo and behold, I could grow potatoes out of the sprouts I had. All I needed was a deep bucket, a drill, and some dirt.

I set to work collecting my list, but I was determined to do it on a budget.  I had already wasted the money on the potatoes, I wasn’t going to waste much more to save my crop.  A quick trip to our local Goodwill store, and I had a wide pinkinsh red tub.  Next stop was at the hardware store for a few bags of dirt, and I was back home.

Since I can’t be trusted with power tools, I had Tom drill a bunch of holes into the bottom of our tub.  Once that was done, I added a bunch of dirt, and my meager potatoes.  Covered it all with more soil, and set the whole contraption on the back deck.

I know what you are thinking, why didn’t you just chuck the potatoes and buy some new ones? Lately I have been into the thought of being more self-sustaining and moving away from wasting when I can.  So much of our money is wasted on food scraps, that I wanted to see if I could get a little return. 

For a few months, I thought the whole experiment was a bust.  It rained and rained, and nothing showed in my tub of dirt and tubers. Around June, we started to see green poking through.  Day by day, they grew a little more.  According to my research, I needed to add more dirt and cover the new growth.

And so our story went throughout the summer.  Eventually the vines died, and we waited a few more weeks for the potatoes to mature.  It wasn’t until last week that I decided it was time to go hunting for potatoes.

I tipped out the contents of the tub and started riffling through the dirt clods. Low and behold, there were little golden nuggets interspersed throughout. I had done it!  What had started as about eight potatoes, turned into a few pounds of potatoes.

Now granted some are too small to eat, but we are working to replant them.  What did we do with the big ones you ask?  Fried em up with butter, salt pepper and parsely, duh!  Check out those beauties:

Now we are looking forward to another round of potato harvest and are looking to continue our container gardening into next year.

Sound off below with your favorite container garden experience.

Until our next adventure,

The Evergreenlady