Planted these 1/27/2025 and just harvested them 5/1/2025. I let the entire potato sprout and planted 4 of them, each in their own 5 gallon bucket, half filled with 420 potting soil plus a 4-4-4 slow release organic fertilizer and mykos. They sprouted up through the dirt about 2 weeks later. I let the plants grow tall, up out of the bucket but wish I would have kept hilling up as the sprout grew as it would have been a lot easier than trying to get dirt around a more mature potato plant. I used a 50/50 blend of 420 potting soil and compost to hill up with. They grew incredible, into huge bushy, lush, green plants. I installed drip irrigation to the buckets but it became an issue as the drip only dropped in one spot letting the rest of the bucket dry out – so I suggest making a ring with drip line with emitters of some sort to wet more of the bucket. There will come a time when the plants all of the sudden start to lose their lushness. Fear not, this is when they begin making potatoes. From then on the plant will slowly start to decline. Also, be aware, that the bucket will be so full of roots at this point it will suck water up like it’s nothing – you will find it hard to overwater at this point. I started to just use a wand head, soaking the bucket until a little water ran from it. Mine never flowered, but instead produced a sort of end of life blight looking brown areas all over the stems of all 3 plants so I just stopped watering them to let the skins thicken up for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t wait and pulled one plant early and harvested about 3lbs of new potatoes from a single bucket. They were beautiful fingerlings, perfect in size, and just prolific as all get-out. Friends were digging up 2lbs of potato out of the ground and here I am with my easy bucket with 3lbs . The flavor was buttery and delicious. Highly recommended for containers.
