Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Anybody grow potatoes?? Prolly not a good ap but whatever you did to be successful. I got some volunteer new potatoes out of a compost pile once but never actually tried growing them.

Yep, no dig style. Throw the seed potatoes on the ground and cover with straw mulch. Keep adding straw mulch as they grow so you end up with a big mound of it, potatoes grow nice and big in the straw. One of the easiest and most satisfying vegies to grow.

Yeah, planted 9 seed potatoes earlier in the year with my 11 year old and she harvested 6 kilos a few weeks back.

Planted them in a tyre and then kept adding another tyre and soil as the plants got taller - worked well.

how high did you eventually go?

I've read an article about growing potatoes in hydro so I asume it can be done in AP. Maybe a custom GB that allows the potatoes to stay a little dry while the lower roots get wet. Flood and slow drain with only the bottom 40cm of the gb and back fill as the plant grows and it should work. Might have to give it a try in a half drum.

I grew a couple of them in my AP system this year as as experiment. I harvested several per plant, but not as well as my regular dirt garden. I don't think they like that much moisture The greens take up a LOT of space and crowded out everything near them.

I'll stock to growing them in the dirt. For me, it's not worth the space lost in the growbeds.

We went three Desert Duellers high - probably coulda done 5 if highly motivated and the kid had picked off caterpillars as frequently as she was supposed to !

What type did she grow??
Not sure if the varitity would work as well for me as it's so wet here.

Potato can grow in AP, the question is do you really want to.

The easy ways I heard of for growing them in Hydroponics included a half barrel and perlite on a trickle through feed. The half barrels cut the long way allow the media to be pushed up out of the way easily by forming tubers instead of busting storage bins open as they grow. I don't know if it would be worth while to grow them this way in AP though. I suppose it depends on how badly you want home grown potatoes and what soil problems you have in growing them.

I've not had much success growing potatoes here in ground so far. Seems we go from freezes to too hot for em too quickly here in the center of the state. This year we are going to try using frost blankets, will be planting the 1st or 2nd of Jan.

I plan on growing them the no dig way also may grow the virginia giant peanuts that way also, just a sandier mix. I know certain varities can tolerate excessive moisture better. I'm hoping the drainage of the no dig style of growing will work better.

I did pretty good with peanuts this past fall. I probably would have done even better had I planted the peanuts with more space and given them an even longer season. I planted to different areas with peanuts and I keep my garden beds quite moist with drip irrigation. I found that peanuts peg just fine into mushroom compost, probably just as good as into sand.

Like CD I used Tyres and went 4 High, tops started dying off so harvest on the weekend a grand total of 20 potato's all on the bottom tyre, have nfi why, have a similar towe still going that we have left at 3 high so see what happens with that one

That's odd Nocky - we were certainly pulling them out from each tyre

roots went in to each tyre well, maybe I didn't water them enough, the bottom ones were quite large though, I could have got another tyre on as well but just let the tops go, they did flower so NFI

Hi All,
I made a cylinder out of wire mesh,600mm diameter,750mm high Lined with news paper put in about 300mm of sheep,cow and chicken poow mixed with good potting mix 100mm pea straw 12 seed potatoes,covered with 100mm of pea straw,watered. each time the shoots came through I covered with 100mm of pea straw. did this 5 times the potatoes are now flowering.
Now do I dig when the flowers die off or when the plant dies back.Have not grown potatoes before.

Peter