How to Plant Potatoes in Buckets or Small Containers

Potatoes get a bad rap for being full of empty calories, putting on pounds, and being overall bad for us, but the fact is, these tubers are actually pretty good for you. Did you know that potatoes have more potassium than bananas? Potassium helps reduce blood pressure, is good for your heart, and reduces the risk of stroke.

Potatoes also have antioxidants, vitamin B6, fiber—both soluble and insoluble—as well as other essential nutrients. Now I’m not here to sell you on potatoes, most people already consume plenty of spuds regularly. In America, it’s thought that individuals consume almost 50 pounds of potatoes a year.

The problem is the way they’re often cooked...yeah, I love french fries just as much as the next person. When potatoes are deep fried, peeled, loaded with butter and bacon bits, cooked in oil, or all of the above, they sure are delicious! Uh…I mean they’re bad for our health.

Anyway, potatoes are an essential part of family meals because they’re inexpensive and so versatile. Even growing them is easy! You don’t have to go out and till up the ground, break your back, and sweat your rump off to grow them, you can actually grow potatoes in buckets, or any decent sized container.

It’s So Easy to Grow Potatoes in Buckets

So easy in fact, you may already have everything you need around your house to start growing potatoes in buckets, pots, or nearly any reasonably deep container. All you need to get started is:

• 5-gallon buckets, old planter pots, or similar
• Soil (gardening soil works great, or even dirt from your own yard mixed with some organic material)
• Seed potatoes (nearly any potato will work, I’ll tell you how)
• That’s it, let’s get to it.

Old five-gallon buckets are easy to find, everyone seems to have a stack of them in their garage, crawlspace, or sitting around the house for various reasons. I see them on the side of the road on a nearly daily basis in my travels. The reason I don’t pick them up is because of how people drive lately—I don’t want to become a hashtag over a bucket.

You don’t have to stick to five-gallon buckets, you can use seven or ten-gallon buckets or well draining containers.

If you don’t have any laying around, they can be purchased for a few dollars at nearly any home improvement store. You can use anything that is about 18” or deeper and allows for water drainage. Other things that can be used to plant potatoes in containers:

• Old, small trash cans (cleaned and sanitized first of course)
• The pots your garden plants came in (that you've been meaning to recycle forever)
• Large planters
• Whiskey barrel planters
• Plastic kitty litter containers (washed and rinsed to remove the dust)

Amazon even has reusable fabric buckets that can be used to grow potatoes. I’d include a link here but I’m not an affiliate…(yet 😅)

You get the picture, anything that’s relatively deep and will hold soil is a candidate for a spud bucket. Look around your house, shed, or storage building, I’m sure you can find several things you could use. Just be careful about using anything that may have stored chemicals, oils, or petroleum-based products. Those could contain trace amounts of chemicals still in the plastic that you don't want in your tubers.

Sometimes you can get free buckets from bakeries (frosting comes in perfect 5-gallon sizes), delis, grocery stores, fast food restaurants, etc. Just call around and see if they have any they are willing to give away for a good cause. This way they’re getting recycled instead of ending up in landfills.

Now that you have your containers you need good soil for your potatoes. I like to stay away from potting mixes because they frequently have fertilizer already mixed in. I like to keep my veggies as chemical free as possible. A good quality organic garden soil is a great alternative.

You can even make your own “super-spud-soil” by mixing one part garden soil, one part compost, and one part peat moss. Add a little bit of organic bone meal for an extra punch of nutrients for your potatoes.

If you have good quality soil around your house, (that’s not been sprayed with chemicals) why not use some of that, and add in some of your own compost mix if you have it. This way you don’t have to purchase dirt.

Next, all you need are some good seed potatoes. Don’t panic if you’re not sure where to buy seed potatoes. Simply go down to your nearest grocery store, check out the produce section, and buy some organic potatoes.

Go ahead and pick out your favorite ones, it doesn’t matter. Want some russets? Get them. Reds, yellows, Yukon gold? Snatch them up. Purple potatoes? For sure! Sweet potatoes? Go ahead and grab them too, but you’ll be cooking those in place of regular potatoes until your first harvest. Sweet potatoes grow differently and need different requirements and space—that’s another subject for another day.

Another reason to pick organic potatoes is because some mass-grown potatoes are treated to keep them from sprouting. Organic potatoes have no such treatments so you know they will grow some "eyes."

If you have potatoes at home already, then you don’t have to make a run to the store, you can get started with what you have. One potato can grow three, four, or more whole plants, depending on how big they are. But first, you need to chit those potatoes.

How Do You Chit Potatoes?

What exactly is chitting a potato you ask? All this means is making the “eyes” sprout. Under normal circumstances, you store your potatoes to keep them from sprouting and turning green, but chitting your potatoes is forcing them to sprout.

All you need to do is place the sacrificial potatoes in a sunny location and wait for them to sprout. Some people like to use egg cartons to set the potatoes in. Room temperature is fine, no need to lower or raise the temp.

In approximately 10 days the potatoes should start sprouting. Now you need to cut the potatoes into two or three-inch pieces—each piece needs to have at least one sprouted eye.

Once they are diced, set them back into the tray and let them dry out a bit. Two to three days should do the trick. Once the cut edges are dried out and brown and the eyes are about an inch or so long, you have successfully chitted your potatoes, and they are ready to be planted.

It’s Time To Plant

You can put two potato chits in a five-gallon bucket, and up to five in a ten-gallon bucket. For wider containers, say a whiskey barrel planter, you should plant your potatoes about 8 inches from each other. For larger potatoes like russets, you might have to expand that space to about a foot away from each other.

Before you add soil to your containers, make sure you have plenty of drainage holes in them. Leaving the potatoes swimming in water will cause them to rot before they even have a chance to grow. Using a half-inch drill bit, drill about five holes in the bottom of a five-gallon bucket. The larger the container, the more holes you will need.

Now add 4-6 inches of your soil mix in the bucket, water it so the soil is moist, then add your potato chits---make sure the eyes are on the sky (pointing up in the dirt, not down). Cover them with 3-4 inches of soil and water again so the dirt is evenly moist.

You’ll need to water them regularly. The idea is to keep the soil moist, but not soaking wet, and don’t let the soil completely dry out. Water again when the top two inches of dirt have dried out. Before the potatoes start to sprout above the ground you can store your spud buckets in the shade so they don't dry out as fast.

When you see growth poking through the soil, move them into the sun. Potatoes need a lot of sun (the leaves and stalks, not the actual spuds). Once the plants are about 8 inches tall backfill with more soil and add more bone meal or a layer of compost. Keep adding soil as the plants grow or if potatoes start poking above the dirt.

Potatoes that get hit by the sun turn green and become inedible, so keep them covered. Continue covering and adding compost and/or bone meal as the stalk grows, until the soil is nearly at the top of the bucket. Don't forget to water them regularly. In hotter climates, you may have to water every day or twice a day to keep the soil from drying out.

You can add a top layer of mulch to help hold in moisture and cover any potatoes that might be trying to sneak out of the dirt. Straw, pine needles, coconut fibers, or regular hardwood mulch that’s not been treated with artificial color or any chemicals like weed preventative are all mulch alternatives.

Keep Your Buckets Off the Ground

To ensure proper drainage, use something to lift the buckets off the ground by a few inches. A couple of 2 by 4’s work perfectly to keep the bottom off the ground and let excess water drain out. You can use bricks or anything that will lift them up just a few inches while keeping the buckets steady.

Is It Time to Harvest Yet?

As soon as two to three months after planting you can begin harvesting your potatoes. When you see flowers on your potato plants, you can go ahead and harvest young potatoes, sometimes called fingerlings or new potatoes.

These tiny tots are tender and delicious. They are perfect for cutting into bite-sized pieces and roasting with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a few spices.

To get fully grown potatoes, let the plants start turning brown and dying off on their own. Once the plants start to fade away, keep the potatoes in the bucket for another two weeks before you harvest them so they get full and plump. Just keep watering them on occasion so the soil doesn’t completely dry out.

Once the plants are completely dead and you're ready to harvest, spread out a tarp or cloth to catch the soil and all the potatoes, then dump the contents out. One potato plant can produce several potatoes, so one five-gallon bucket is liable to net you a few pounds of starchy goodness.

It’s tempting to take them and immediately wash them off and start cooking, but you need to let the skins cure for a few hours. The skins are very tender at this point. Just lightly knock the majority of the dirt off them and let them sit in the air for about an hour or two.

After that, your potatoes are ready to use. There’s nothing quite like the taste of freshly grown, completely organic potatoes. They have a richer flavor, a firmer texture, and you feel good knowing you grew them!

Now don’t forget to save a few potatoes for the next crop. What’s that? It’s almost fall, and the world outside is telling you it’s too late to grow any more potatoes because a frost is imminent. Okay, move your potato plants inside and grow them indoors.

Just follow the above steps except place the containers indoors. The only difference is you will need to put them in a sunroom or an area that gets at least 8 hours of sunlight a day. If you don’t have a sunroom you can use grow lamps to provide that needed 8 to 10 hours of light per day.

You won’t have to water them nearly as much since the hot sun and wind aren’t working to dry them out, but continue to use the 2-inch rule. When the soil is dry two inches deep, give the potatoes a good soaking.

This way you can have your own fresh grown potatoes all year-round with little fuss.

Have You Tried Purple Potatoes?

Let’s face it, eating healthy can be challenging on the best of days. There are times when you simply don’t have time to cook a healthy meal and you either run through the nearest drive-through, or you whip up something fast like hot dogs and mac and cheese. I get it, I’ve been there myself many times.

Chicken nuggets or fish sticks with tater-tots were a weekly occurrence in my household for a long time. There were times when I’d nuke a couple of frozen, mystery-ingredient chimichangas for dinner. Now with the invention of door-dash, I don't have to go anywhere to get my junk food fix.

I try to eat healthy most days...that's got to count for something right? I digress, I love fresh vegetables and trying new things, so when I came across purple potatoes, I had to give them a shot. I love potatoes of any kind, prepared any way, and I have to say I have fallen in love with the purple spuds. When I found out they are even better for you than white flesh potatoes, it was a happy day!

These potatoes appear dark blue, to almost black on the outside, and the flesh is a deep, rich purple color, but don’t let the appearance throw you off, these beauties are delicious. If you like potatoes of any kind you will like these. They have the typical potato flavor or earthiness, but it’s a fuller, richer flavor, along with a warm nuttiness.

You cook them the same way you would any potato, mashed, roasted, boiled, whichever way you choose, they will turn out great. Purple potatoes land somewhere between russet potatoes and red potatoes in terms of firmness and texture. They don’t get as soft as russets, their skin is smoother like reds and yellows, but they aren’t as dense as red potatoes.

Purple potatoes have all the benefits and nutrition of white-flesh potatoes, only more of it, and they have a better glycemic index than other potatoes. These potatoes are packed with antioxidants, potassium, fiber, and other essential vitamins and minerals, especially when you leave the skin on.

So try out some purple potatoes, or maybe go ahead and grow some for yourself. They are just as easy to grow as any other spud.

I hope this has helped you get out there and get your hands dirty, and realize that growing potatoes isn’t as hard as it appears. If you have questions, or comments, feel free to leave them below. While you're here, go ahead and tap that heart icon if you enjoyed this post, (it doesn't just feed my ego, the likes and comments help to keep the post higher in the metrics and get more views. It pays me a tiny commission and I'm able to continue following my dreams and write more!) :-) Follow me for more gardening tips and how-to guides.

Bio: I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina where a common past-time was picking apples, wild blueberries, or blackberries, then taking them home to make pies, cobblers, or jars of preserves. It’s a tradition I want to pass down to my family. In addition to that, I have always had a fascination with growing plants. It didn’t matter what kind, flowers, trees, fruits, or vegetables, if it came from the ground I wanted to try my hand at growing it. Some of my favorite things to grow are flower bulbs (nearly any kind, though daylilies and irises are top of the list here), tomatoes, beans, okra, and squash.

My dream is to one day live as much off the grid and be as self-sufficient as possible. I love growing and preserving my own food as it just seems to taste so much better. When I’m not in the vegetable or flower garden, I’m writing blogs, freelancing, or working on novels.

You can check out more of my random ramblings or fiction stories here on Vocal Media or at

https://amtwriting77.com/

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