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slowpoke_gardener

sweet potato container flop

This is my first time to try to grow a veggie in a container. I planted 4 slips in a large black contained with garden soil, compost and shaving in it. I did not want to invest in any potting soil when I have more space than I need, but wanted to try a way of growing potatoes and harvesting without digging.

I took the container to the garden to dump it and harvest what few roots might be in it. The roots were small, if I try this again I will try less compost, more water, and a little shade for the black container.

Larry

Comments (5)

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    Larry, I grew sweet potatoes in a 4' diameter, 3' deep galvanized cattle water trough filled with a soil-less growing mix to which I had added quite a lot of sand (so the growing mix wouldn't be too rich) a few years back, and got a yield like yours with lots of long skinny potatoes. .When I grew the same varieties in the ground in poor sandy soil which had been only moderately well-amended about a decade before, I got huge sweet potatoes, so I am inclined to think the compost/garden soil/shaving mix might have been too fertile even if you didn't fertilize. At least that is what I figured out about my sweet potatoes grown in a large container. I also might have watered them too much because it was a hot, drought year (when is it not?) and I worried and fretted that I wasn't keeping them well-watered.

    I haven't dug this year's potatoes yet and likely won't dig them until October at the earliest. You are so far ahead of me. At the rate I am getting things done (or, actually, not getting them done), I won't even be starting the garden clean-up for another month.

    Generally small potatoes still taste good (as long as their texture isn't stringy).

    Dawn

  • slowpoke_gardener
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Dawn, they look like they will taste great, very, very tender. Our dog is the only one that has eaten any out of the container, he loves them. I have dug 2 or 3 hill from the garden, which were good, but low production. The white ones are more aggressive and have over-grown the brown ones, so I had my grand-daughter make cuttings and start a new crop of the brown ones in the north garden. They will need all the growing time they can get, especially with this cooler weather.

    If I can get my health headed in the right direction I may relocate some of my crops to new ground next year, or just rotate, Period. I seemed to have amended most of my soil to the point that it wants to grow tons of vines and lower levels of fruit. I did not know you could do that with compost and mulch alone.

    I am hoping my little tractor will solve my potato digging problem, if so, the container growing will not be as important. The tractor has worked very well on everything else I have tried it on.

    Larry

  • lady_nikki
    9 years ago

    I have some inner baskets salvaged from dead washers which I was planning to plant with sweeets and leave, maybe on bricks, for leaves spillling out to look pretty, maybe a dwarf zinnia or something in the center.
    So, thanks for the tips
    Larry, maybe if you'd planted only one, the taters would have been bigger, but not so many. I'm thinking volume X of soil will support Y pounds of tubers.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    Larry, I do think that your soil now is too rich for the crops like sweet potatoes that grow and produce well on crappy soil. The good thing is that "heat eats compost" so the organic matter you added to the soil will decompose and go away and your soil will become less fertile in 2 or 3 years' time if you don't add any more organic matter to that area. That then would allow sweet potatoes and other plants that don't need rich soil (southern peas and okra come to mind) to produce well in the area that right now may be too rich for them.

    I agree with Lady Nikki that your results can vary depending on how closely the sweet potatoes were planted. I grow my sweet potatoes square-foot-garden style with one potato slip planted per square foot. I do that because I like to grow many different kinds of sweet potatoes but I have to grow them in a raised bed lined with hardware cloth so that the voles don't eat them, and I only have two small raised beds lined with hardware cloth. (I intend to work on redoing some of the beds this winter so I can add hardware cloth to them, which will give me more space to grow the plants that voles tend to devour.) When you plant one slip per square foot in all directions, you get fewer pounds of potatoes per plant, but we still get more potatoes than we can eat before they start sprouting in the spring. I think I grew 9 different varieties this year. At 3 slips per variety, that would have been 27 different plants but Gary always overpacks and sends extra slips (I'm assuming he is allowing for the fact that a slip here or there might fail to root in and grow) so I think I planted about 40 plants in a raised bed that is 40 square feet. I haven't harvested yet and I didn't water them much, so I might not get high yields, but I still bet we'll have more than we can eat. The vines themselves have looked good all year, although in August I probably let them get too dry and they wilted a couple of times, so I may find knobby potatoes when I dig them. Luckily, a person still can eat knobby potatoes.

    Dawn

  • Auther
    9 years ago

    Sweet potatoes do better if they are planted at least 12-18 inches apart. They don't like to be crowded and the looser the soil the better. The loose soil lets them spread or plump up. They don't like to much shade either. They can be over watered also. Over watering will cause long skinny roots and too much vine.