The heat is starting to climb, so the early season stuff is starting to struggle a bit. Looks like terra cotta beats plastic and big beats small. There you go, empirical evidence of a fact everyone already knew: plants prefer the expensive pots

    • ThrowawaySobriquet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      An attempt at vertical gardening with potatoes. A hoop of cattle fencing with a bit of landscaping fabric on the bottom to hold in a grow medium, then straw up as the seed potatoes send up the shoots

      At the start of the season, I was excited to try a next step from potatoes the previous season that were grown in plastic tubs. Got a lot more than I was expecting, but also a lot of rotten potatoes since the drainage was bad

      So, to remedy the drainage issues, here we are. I’ve since read a bunch of stuff about how towers are bad, especially for determinate potatoes (some are), so we’ll see how things come along

      • Clay_pidginEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        They look really cool!

        I’ve never considered growing potatoes because I don’t have much space, and a crop of 6 potatoes doesn’t seem worth the effort! How many taters do you get from a planter that size?

        • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          6 months ago

          Not OP, but here’s what I harvested after growing potatoes in a 5 gallon home cheapo bucket with holes drilled on the bottom. They’re not particularly big, but it was somewhere between 3-5 pounds worth. The decision to grow a potato was very spur of the moment, not well researched, and last minute (I think we started it toward the end of June).

          Effort to yeild ratio was very favorable. Other than adding a few inches of dirt every few weeks I didn’t so a thing to the plant.

          • Clay_pidginEnglish
            2·
            6 months ago

            That sounds doable! Did you plant a potato with sprouted eyes, or what?

            • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              6 months ago

              Yeah, it was a potato that had spent a little too much time on the counter and had eyes forming. Like I said, it was a very spur of the moment decision.