This year we’ve been running an experiment to grow new potatoes in a bag.

Because of our delightful but postage-stamp-sized garden frequently reported on within the pages of this site, we have been experimenting with a number of similar ‘bag growing’ projects including runner beans, French beans and tomatoes. In this particular case, the brief was to see how effectively we could produce new potatoes in half a growbag.

We knew it was a bit late when we somewhat belatedly embarked on this project. It was mid-June and they should have been planted in April. But we had some ageing shop-bought new potatoes that were in the vegetable rack in the kitchen and which had started to shoot so we thought, why not try something and see if it works. We thought we would see if you need to buy special potatoes or if you could use some that had gone over for cooking and which normally would simply be fed to the compost bin.
 
First, we cut a growbag in half then added some holes in the bottom for drainage (not too big – you don’t want all the compost leaking out). Then we put 3″ of compost in the bag. We used the compost we had taken out of the growbag (you could use soil or a bit of both). Then we put 3 little new potatoes in the bag, each of which had 1 or 2 shoots. Then we put a bit more compost in the bag so you could only see the top of the shoots.

As the shoots grew, we kept topping up the compost until the bag was full. Very shortly we’ll empty it out and see what we have!

Editor, Third Age.