Potatoes are insanely easy to grow, and just as easy to kill.
I should know. I've killed so many potato plants over the years.
But - I've also successfully grown a lot of potatoes, too, in some of the weirdest ways.
My favorite way is to sew a giant bag out of weed barrier cloth and use that to grow the potatoes in. When I harvest the potatoes, I move the soil to another garden, and yes, for now, I buy new soil every year for my potatoes.
If you have a balcony or patio that gets about 6 hours of direct sunlight, you can grow your own potatoes.
You’ll need a 15 – 30 gallon bag – burlap or sew one up out of weed barrier cloth – and soil and seed potatoes. I like Mel’s Mix (1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost), but any good quality gardening soil will work. Make sure the bag is someplace that can take water or you put a water catcher under it so it doesn’t spill, because it will.
Roll the bag down so there’s 8 inches at the bottom. Fill that 8 inches with your soil and 3 – 5 potato seedlings. Use only organic potatoes or potatoes being sold as seed potatoes - some commercial potatoes are sprayed with stuff that prevents or slows the potatoes from developing eyes - and it's the eyes that sprout and make new potatoes. One whole potato should be enough to seed a 30 gallon bag. Cut the potato so each piece has at least one ready to sprout or already sprouting eye. I like to cut mine so there are two or three sprouting eyes per piece. Leave the cut pieces out to "cure" for a day before planting them.
Here, at a friend's house, we did the 30 gallon contractor's bag for potatoes.
Water it. As the potatoes grow, roll the bag up and fill it with more soil. We alternated using straw with soil because we mulched with the straw.
Topped with straw:
Topped with more soil:
When the potato leaves stop growing and start dying, it’s time to harvest.
I wasn't there for the harvest, so I don't have pictures of that. I do have a picture of the potato soup topped with potato croutons made from her potatoes. She grew three bags of potatoes: Yukon Gold, German Butter Potatoes, and Kennebec Reds.
To harvest your potatoes, you can roll the top down and scoop your potatoes out (tidy and you can recycle the soil), or you can slit the seam and let the potatoes spill out (messy, soil harder to collect for reusing unless you have a tarp handy). You can harvest baby potatoes before the tops turn brown and start dying back but your crop won't be as large.
You should harvest about 20 pounds of potatoes from the bag – the larger the bag, the more potatoes you can plant and harvest, but 30 gallons is about the largest bag most folks can handle.
You can grow multiple bags of potatoes, a different type of potato in each bag. Or you can just grow one bag to see if you like it.
You can grow potatoes in straw bales (difficult, because the partially composted bales are heavy and awkward to stack - but possible - I prefer the partially composted straw bales for growing tomatoes, but that's another diary.), in discarded tire stacks (difficult to harvest in my personal experience, but yours may vary), trash cans (use new ones! Use a tarp to reclaim the soil when you dump the can to harvest), stacked pallets (really difficult to harvest if you do this the stupid way like I did, not so bad when you do it the smart way), or raised beds like lasagna gardening or square foot gardening.
You can also overwinter your potatoes in the soil in those bags or trash cans, digging out only what you need at a time. I want to know how many potatoes I actually have, so I tend to slit the seam of my bags (I can re-sew them) and harvest the potatoes, then repack them into a used only for potatoes trash can with soil so they stay firm and fresh and don't sprout as fast. As I use up the potatoes, I put the soil into another trash can to use as top dressing mixed with compost for other parts of my garden.