This year I decided to attempt to grow potatoes in containers. I had some plastic 55 gallon drums laying around, so i cut them in half. I then put a 6" layer of compost at the bottom of each half.
I placed 5 German Butterball seed potatoes into each container, a few inches deep in the soil. Some potato strains are preferable to others when it comes to vertical potato growing, and this strain is one of them.
As soon as the plants started sprouting from the compost, I began covering them with straw. Straw is an alternative to soil, and works well for "hilling" the potato plants.
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Once the plants had a few sets of leaves, they really began to take off. They went from about 6 inches to close to 3 feet within a couple weeks time.
This strain of potato has a long growing season, approximately 135 days. In about two weeks, ill get to see the results!