Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A few members were interested in the concept I described about growing potatoes in bags (not my idea). So I thought I would post a thread about my progress.

Essentially you grow the potatoes in "hessian" bags. Starting with the tops of the bags rolled down so they stand about 30cm high. You place 25-30cm of soil/compost in the bottom air the bags and plant seed potatoes about 10th deep. As they grow and the stalks start to grow taller, you add soil to the top of the bag so the top leaves are just exposed. Rolling the bag higher as necessary. This basically achieves the same thing a "hilling up" potatoes in a garden bed, but with more efficient use of space.

Tubers will grow all the way up the buried stalks, increasing yield. You can achieve the same thing by staking tires.

Stay tuned for pics.

Got side tracked....So I have two bags to grow the potatoes in. A commercial potato grow bag with Velcro door in the front (left in image below) and a woven bag that sand came in from landscape supplies (right in image)

Bags rolled down and ready to go

Not sure if this is the right mix for potatoes (probably too acidic), but...clockwise from top right... equal parts of potting mix, sugar cane mulch, composted cow manure, organic compost.

Bags filled about 15-17 mm and potatoes in. I put the potatoes with the most mature sprouts in the home sourced bag, but put an extra in the commercial one.

Bags topped with another 10cm of the soil mix & put in their final position against the water tank. Thermal mass here should mitigate effects of frost.

Will try to post updates when the first sprouts show, on each "hill up" and on harvest.

You dont have to plant the whole potato, you can just cut the sprouts off if you want.

Good luck with them.
Home grown potatoes taste fantastic

Well by this time the potatoes are inedible anyway. If they were fairly fresh and had big sprouts I would have done that. But this year I could only find them with little buds and had to wait ages for some decent sprouts to grow.

Sweet, I've just run out of space in the dirt garden so this might be an option to grow more spuds. Thanks for posting your idea (even if it wasn't yours)

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It's hard to see but the first sprouts are through the top layer of soil. This is in the hessian bag, Which had more mature seed potatoes. It looks like the ones in the other bag may come up soon, as you can see where the soil is being pushed up.

Btw, I moved the bag from their original position about a week ago due to not getting the arvo sun

These are our spuds in the background under the manderin tree DrLuke.

Been in a couple of months now and have really overtaken the garden.

Cant wait to try them, will be my first ever home grown potatoes.

Nice, ull get a shite load outta that.

I was blown away last year when I found a few sprouting potatoes in my cupboard and burried them to see how I went. A few month later I had a couple of kg of potatoes.

Too easy to grow to let the opportunity slip by each year.

yea I think I put about 20 seed potatoes in there

i saw a segment on burkes backyard where all he did was stack car tires up and add hay ontop when the leaves came up . when it came time to harvest he just kicked the car tire stack over and all the potatoes were growing happily in the rim of the tires
.... ever since then i have always wanted to try doing it that way . mainly so i can kick over a stack of tires
ill stay tuned to this thread doc good luck !