Lazy Potatoes

The last time I planted potatoes was kind of a disaster. I planted them in the middle of my veggie garden, not realizing how many other plants are firmly anti-tater. So I ended up with my tomatoes and onions and potatoes all on the same side of the garden and hating me for it. The potatoes got what appeared to be some sort of blight and all of the plants died off. Some of them grew back, and I managed to harvest quite a few very small potatoes. Then when I dug up the rest of the garden before we moved this year, I found a bunch more in the dirt that I brought to the new house and saved the rest for planting this year. I figured, shit, if they can make it through living with onions and tomatoes and blight and STILL grow, these little guys have some serious disease resistance now.

So, not wanting to have to deal with potatoes being shitty neighbours and being exceedingly cheap and lazy I devised a potato growing plan. It consists of trash bags and crates. No joke. That's it. I put a big plastic bag inside of each crate ind filled with a few inches of soil. Then I put my seed potatoes - eye-sprouts up - in the dirt, and covered with a couple more inches of soil. The last step was poking holes in the bottom and sides for drainage and tying off the too-large trash bags so they don't flap around all willy nilly in the wind. Then I probably took a nap, because that's how easy this shit is.

So I have these two crates, one with the old blight resistant red potatoes and one with yellow baby dutches I got from TJ's, and pretty much all there is to it is adding more soil when you have a few inches of potato plants above the soil. The idea is to keep the green growth to a minimum while encouraging tuber growth. Another perk is that the soil is always nice and loose, and you won't spend the next 5 years digging up wayward missed potatoes in your veggie garden. It isn't the prettiest method ever, but then again I never said it was, so slow your roll.

I'm at the point now where one of the plants is beginning to flower and both crates are filled to the top with soil. This is where the experimental part comes in. I'm just going to keep filling up the bags with soil, bit by bit, with the tops of the plants exposed, until I am out of bag. And then, when they are ready, I will spill the potato guts of the trash bags all over my backyard and collect the bounty. Much like a pirate. If pirates found bounty in the disembowelled bodies of their vicitms. What are pirating victims anyway? Piratees? The pirated? Piracy tragets? But enough of pirates. Here are the potatoes.