Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Bag

March 24, 2009, North Palm Springs, California

About three weeks ago a brochure came in the mail about a book from Rodale Press about Lasagna Gardening. We already knew the methods. They are virtally the same as permaculture, forest gardening, no-work gardening, etc., with some modifications always necessary for where the garden is and other things. We also aren’t into spending money on gardening books when we have 1,000 already and broadband Internet. However, one thing mentioned was new in some ways: growing potatoes in a garbage bag. So I googled it and started on trying it the very next day.

It took me about a week to get the things I needed together. These were a garbage bag, some dried eyes of the sprouted potatoes I found behind a produce market about a month ago, which (the potatoes, not the market!) I’d been saving on the kitchen island to plant, and believe it or not the hardest thing to find, enough soil to cover a few potato eyes. We compost everything, and mulch on top of the soil as we go along, but using a soaker hose below ground level makes that all compost quickly, with far less volume than it had when we started with raw materials. So with all the garden beds planted already, I had trouble finding soil to spare. Ultimately I found enough in corners and under barbecue tables. It doesn’t take much, really, to fill the bottom of a garbage bag with three inches of soil.

For the bag, the directions said use a particular kind of ”heavy” garbage bag. I didn’t have that kind, so I double-bagged two ordinary black ones from under my kitchen sink, where I had recycled them to reuse again for trash. We don’t have much trash anyway, and the development where we are growing the Home Grown Food Network demonstration garden has a common dumpster, so we just unload filled garbage bags into it and reuse the bags over and over. We end up throwing away about two every year or so, when they develop holes or something, so I had plenty. If I hadn’t, I would have gone to the dumpster and unloaded some other people’s trash and taken those. Overpackagaing is not just in retail products, after all. Black is important because it heats the soil, not a problem here later in the year but it’s ”only” a high of 60-70 degrees days now, so not all that warm for germinating plants. There is an RV section in this development and people from Canada tell us about 50-below, which I can’t even imagine. I appreciate not needing a sweater even, but germinating plants need it warmer.

Then I poked a few little holes along the side of the bottom and put a few inches of soil in, enough to cover up the potato pieces. I had (and still have most of) 30 or so baby organic Yukon Gold potatoes from a bag that had sprouted every single potato before I found it. I know those potatoes did not have any anti-sprout spray on them! Then I put four of those whole in the soil in the bottom of one double bag, and dumped in a little recycled rain water from a watering can (it does rain here an average of three days a year, and I save every drop in many, many pails and buckets). Then I rolled the sides of the bag down close to where the top of the covered potatoes were and left it in the sun at the edge of the gazebo where we’re creating a greenhouse.

I came out in the morning and put in a little more rain water two or three more times, every three or four days. That was all. My kind of easy.

This morning when I went out there to water, I couldn’t believe it! Three plants about six inches high each, lush and crammed with green leaves. I was so excited, I ran to get Peter and show him he’d think he was back in Ireland. Well, one or two square feet of Ireland, anyway.

The directions said as soon as the plants grow, fill them over with fallen leaves or grass clippings, so the plants keep growing up to try to reach the sun. Potatoes are tubers that form along the stems of those plants below the surface. When plants are grown in soil, you have to use more soil to make hills, and then they compact in the sun and from watering into hard enough layers that you have to use tools to find and get the potatoes out. That can damage the plants or the potatoes. I liked the idea of using lightweight covering you can dig down in with your hands. You can use that in the bag because the sides keep it from blowing or washing away.

Once again, though, just as with soil, it wasn’t that easy to find lots of dry coverings. We use all we have for mulch except the awful oleanders the Park has here, which we can’t use because they are poison. Peter found enough dry leaves and small small twigs, though, and I covered the plants.

Then I went to look at the russets I had planted in another bag in the back yard. Our dog had dug them out of the soil in the garbage bag, so I had to start over and put the bag up off the surface a little on some concrete pavers, hopefully far enough that he won’t see them, since he is blind, or be able to reach them, as frail as he is.

This is so much fun. I was thinking, too, we can reach in and get new potatoes as we go along instead of buying bags of potatoes that spoil before we eat them all (even if they are not already sprouted when we get them, the way overripe ones we find behind stores are likely to be). I keep buying bags because two loose potatoes cost almost as much as a bag on sale, so there never is a way to win. Growing our own allows taking a few to use at a time as they are growing, spreading the harvest over many weeks instead of having too much at once. It’s the same with mesclun lettuces and spinach, tomatoes, herbs like chives, cilantro, and parsley, and aromatics like garlic and onions. Besides, the directions said 15-20 pounds grow in a bag. Not bad for no investment at all except a little time.

So if you come here and see garbage bags all over, don’t think we’re too lazy to empty the trash. We just found more kinds of potatoes to try growing this easy, fun way. I saw some purple ones. . .

I’ll let you know what else we learn.

Brenda Barnes, President
Home Grown Food Network,Inc.