The potato planter experiment
I just harvested one of our three 40l grow bags of Charlotte potatoes - which are meant to do well in containers - to cook up some saag aloo. I went for a container option rather than planting them out due to the presence of wireworm in the soil throughout the veggie patch. I filled each bag with a 40l bag of compost and planted one potato in each bag just below the surface. Because i didn't read the instructions until after harvesting the spuds I see I should have only filled each bag to 15 cm, added the spud and covered it, and then gradually added more compost as the plant grew. Anway despite this I got 1.86kg of perfect undamaged spuds, all of which were in the top half of the container because of where I had planted it. I have a couple of plants in the ground to compare this to and 2 more grow bags so can update the site with more info. For now I am quite happy with the result and will re-use the bags next year planting properly this time. [ Bag 2 harvested on 19/6 had a very similar 1.88kg of lovely tasty clean spuds. Bag 3 is still unharvested. The spuds in the soil yielded less that the bags probably because of poor soil and not such a sunny spot as the bags ]
Pros:
Save space in your veggie patch.
Avoid parasite problems .
Spuds can be started off in potting shed or greenhouse and easily moved outside.
Spuds are very easy to get out. Far easier and cleaner than digging out of the ground.
Spuds can be left in the planter - which could be moved into a potting shed - until needed with less worry about parasites.
Cons:
Yields are meant to be lower.
Cost: 1 potato planter plus compost is around £8 so it makes for costly spuds the first year, although with re-use of bags and using the compost on the garden the real cost will be much lower.