Growing Potatoes in Grow Bags

This is my first time growing potatoes, so I’m excited to see how it goes!  I contemplated growing them in the ground, in a raised garden bed, in garden containers, and in grow bags.  I decided to do grow bags because they were fairly inexpensive, and there was no building necessary.  I got these 25-gallon grow bags on Amazon.

I decided to go with German Butterball potato seeds, which I purchased online.

I received 2 lbs of seed potatoes, which was roughly 20 potatoes.  I sat them in an egg carton for a couple weeks so they would sprout out.  Not everyone does this process of chittng though, so it’s not necessary.  I had planned to cut the potatoes into pieces and let them dry a few days before planting them, but I felt I should really get them in some dirt soon.

I wound up doing 10 potatoes in each 25-gallon grow bag.  I am hoping these are not placed too close.  Honestly, I did not want to use 3 grow bags for the potatoes, so we’ll see how these do.

I covered the potatoes with some soil (Miracle Gro mixed with Black Cow composted manure and some vermiculite).  As you see above, I did not fill the bags completely.  Once the leaves are poking out of the dirt a good bit, I will add more dirt.  Gradually, the bags will be filled with dirt as the potato vines grow.  I will have to do some follow up posts on my experience with growing potatoes in grow bags.  Fingers crossed they turn out amazing!

Update 6/25/21: While going through and re-adding the images to my posts after switching website themes, I realized I never updating on this. I planted these on April 16, 2019. We moved to our current house July 9, 2019 – so I didn’t really have much time to focus on my plants and garden. The potatoes grew lots of green and were out of control. When we moved, I cut them back so they wouldn’t get damaged during transport. They grew back nicely but started looking rough again. So I finally harvested them July 24th. I didn’t weigh them, but I’m not sure I even got my 2 lbs worth of seed potatoes out of this. Maybe I will try potatoes again one day.