Growing potatoes in a plastic dustbin

It all started with me realising how many bags of red potatoes we go through between the 2 of us in our house, they are a brilliant thing to have in the pantry. I'm vegetarian so a well-stocked veggie garden was a sensible idea for me :-) So, tiny space, but I want to grow potatoes.... I found you can grow them in bags, but that's a little tricky, but plastic dustbins work well...

1. Get a 60-90 litre black bin (only about $10 from bunnings)

2. Drill 10mm holes in the base and a few on the sides about 10cm up from the bottom...potatoes need well draining soil or they just rot.

3. Buy some seed potatoes from your local nursery - sprouted potatoes from your pantry will not do as well as they have been treated to minimise sprouting.

Now, a lot of sites and books say you need to chit seed potatoes (sit them out in egg trays to sprout until they have 15cm shoots on them) before planting them, but I'm not patient at all and found a few sites that said that wasn't necessary, so I didn't bother :-) Other sites also say you need to cut the potatoes so there's only one or 2 eyes on each piece you plant and let them dry out before planting them...again, not necessary.

4. Fill the bin about with about 10cm good quality organic potting mix with some potato fertlilizer mixed through it. Place only about 4 or 5 seed potatoes onto this base then cover with 10-15cm of potting mix & fertilizer. Do not firm down, potatoes like loose soil to grow in.

5. Water and make sure the bin is draining well.

6. Place in a sunny spot. Keep soil damp but not wet.

7. Wait...about 3-4 weeks...

8. When shoots start appearing on the surface, let them grow to about 5cm then cover them up to the top (so the leaves just poke through the surface) with a mix of 50:50 compost:mulch.

9. Repeat this process until the bin is full to the top.

It's that easy, and once the shoots sprout through the first layer it only takes about a fortnight for them to reach the top of the bin!

You could stop at the first layer, but then would only get one clutch of potatoes at that level. By adding more layers of soil, you trick the plant into thinking it needs to send off more offshoots and hence produce more clutches of potatoes..you'll get about 10 times the amount of potatoes form each plant this way! (Well, that's the theory...mine aren't ready for harvest just yet but I'll let you know how they go!)

So, you can start rummaging around gently for new potatoes after a couple of months, or wait until the plants die back to brown leaves (a few months later) and then harvest the full main crop.

My potato bin, as you can see, is full to brimming and now my challenge is to keep those plants, that have worked so hard to get this far, healthy...the aphids have moved in! So there's a yellow dish of soapy water in the middle, a ladybird house right next door and some lures for them too (some marigolds growing next to them and basil and coriander growing nearby). I am still having to control the aphids with home made spray and picking them off each day but they only swarmed in this week so there's no ladybirds yet...if anyone knows where I can buy some in Australia I'd LOVE to know! :-)