Bachelor on the Cheap

By Mike Thayer

Talk about making it EASY to grow potatoes!

It's late March, about 60 degrees out and I've got spring fever bad!

To deal with that 'fever' today I'm planting potatoes!

I've grown potatoes before, in a traditional garden plot direct in the ground and in raised beds.  It's not difficult to grow potatoes and I enjoyed some very tasty spud harvests, but potatoes do take up a lot of space in the garden, especially in raised beds.  So with space considerations in mind, I haven't grown potatoes in my gardens for a very long time.

Enter the ANPHSIN 10 Gallon Garden Potato Grow Bags

This is the first time I've used grow bags and what a great concept!  Ordering a 4 pack of these bags on Amazon, these things are made of a heavy duty aeration fabric, come with a Velcro flap to harvest the potatoes and sturdy handles make the bags easily mobile.

Planting the potatoes was easy peasy.  I filled the bag about half full with potting mix, put four certified seed potatoes - Kennebec Russets - in the bag eyes up and covered them with about 4 inches of the potting mix.  Once the vines break through that top layer of soil and start reaching for the sun, I'll add more potting mix to fill the bag as the vines grow.   Kennebec Russets are a great all purpose potato, good for baking, roasting and mashing.  But their flavor really comes out in frying.

3 to 4 tubers to a bag

Harvesting the potatoes will be even easier!  Back in the day when I used to grow potatoes and it came time to harvest - after the tops of the vines died back - I would reach for my trusty potato fork.  Potato forks are great because there's a lot less damage done to the potatoes vs. using a regular shovel, which would tend to slice a lot of spuds.  But even with the potato fork and careful digging, you still might spear a spud or two and then there was always a spud or two that got missed, left behind in the dig.   There's no digging necessary with these bags!  That flap allows for super easy access to potatoes ready for eating, just reach in and grab!  And there's no way to miss harvesting any potatoes because you can just empty the bag when tossing the dead vines in the compost prior to storing some potatoes and the bag you grew them in at the end of the season.

Mobile and space saving

Costing me $20 on Amazon for a 4 pack of bags, I'm giving ANPHSIN 10 Gallon Garden Potato Grow Bags 5 out of 5 Bachelor on the Cheap stars.  They're very reasonably priced, durable, mobile, easy to use and will be easy to store.  Bonus:  You can grow other veggies such as onions, peppers and tomatoes and given the nice, tidy soil environment, garden pests that like to live in the soil should be marginalized.