grow potatoes

    So we are homeowners !!! I know that's exciting news , well it is to me and since I am the sole reader of this , it excites me .    But with home ownership comes the the opportunity to do all the things we've wanted to do. There is still work to be done but it's coming together and we couldn't be more excited.

Right now I have been working on our "garden" while we don't have a whole lot of yard to till up and plant , since most of our yard is a deck for the pool and our driveway/parking lot. I am having to be creative in my gardening .  So we are going container style!   I have a decent variety of veggies this year my set up is still a work in progress since I've never had more than just one thing in a container and never really "cared" if it made it or not , so we shall see .     

  For our potatoes I am doing them in a "potato condo" so this should be interesting to say the least. Here is how I did it , This is my first attempt at this and I have no prior experience growing potatoes so any comments or direction would be welcomed with open ears. 

             

First , you want to gather your supplies obviously. Here I have 4 boards that are 2x2's  those will be my corner posts and I am using scrap wood from a project here at the house to start off my slats, they are the trim from a doorway we took down and walled in for an additional bedroom . they are each cut into 2foot long pieces , I started with nails and hammer.

of course you need a "helper" to loose your nails in the grass 

i then attached one of the trim boards to the corner boards , I did that twice making my north and south "walls" I then used another trim board to "box" them in as my "helpers" noted it looks like I am making a table , but it's upside down.

after much aggravation and sub par " helpers" I opted to pull out the air compressor and nail gun. aka : things just got serious lol 

I attached all the sides , and added a few extra on the back since i'd like to put it in a place that it will just be a little easier to not have to get in between there to attach more boards as I hill up the plants 

here are the two completed boxes with my "helpers" as you can see 2 three year olds and 2 four year olds and a 14month old can make some pretty cool stuff :) 

Next I had my seed potatoes cut and ready to go , I read the larger ones you are suggested to cut so that you have 2 eyes per seed ,  my new potatoes ( the smaller ones ) only had one eye per potato anyway so there was no need to cut those .   Some things I read said to let it air them air dry and crust over , some said not to . I opted for not. 

I also opted to not till the soil under the beds, our ground is soft and we are anticipating more rain as it is so it will be soft for a while , I did read that potatoes like acidic soil so i did put some pine needles at the bottom they will compost and also help with the grass/weeds growing up while the soil is at it's lower levels

I really didn't have enough soil to get a good solid bottom layer on them, but until I can get to Lowe's this weekend they will do alright. but here they are , my 2x2x2 potato condo's    one is growing New potatoes and the other is growing Yukon Gold. I hope that our dog Yodi will keep squirrels away..


 I will be sure to update with our harvest I am interested to see how they turn out.