I have a few potatoes to plant and I don't have my garden ready yet but I do have a large empty flower area next to my house that is mostly shaded. Can I plant my potatoes there?? It would be a perfect spot except is shaded.
Potatoes in shade??
I planted a batch of potates under a maple tree last year and they did surprisingly well. They did get a couple of hours of early morning sun, but after that, they were lucky to get dappled sun on a windy day.
I don't have a lot so I was thinking it was no big deal if I wanted to experiment. :) Thanks for your input, it makes me feel like it may work.
You can grow them in a container if you have one. You'd also need to be sure they have room to go UP and fill in the upward space with leaves, straw, compost, or some mixture of the 3.
Check out the "Potatoes Under Straw" threads for more info.
I used a sleeve for mine and it worked great. I guess I should explain that the area under the tree is a bed - about 4-6" of soil, which I trenched, then put a large sleeve over so I could continue to add to it. (The sleeve was a bottomless 3 gallon container.) I only did it because I'd run out of garden space and and still had a couple of pieces of potato left. I got about 10 potatoes out of it, so I thought it was a successful experiment.
How 'bout this?
And two 20-gallon SmartPots...this was taken 3/17/10, and the bag is rolled down. The potato vine is at the same height as the bag. I'm gonn fill the bag with potting mix, wrap some chicken wire around the bag and continue filling it with leaves as the vine grows up.
Hopefully, that'll be enough of a soil base to get me a nice batch of potatoes (I'm a firsttimer...)
Lind, looking good!