Some time around March, I started growing potatoes in grow bags. I'm not sure about the variety of the potatoes but they were small and tasted the best out of all the potato varieties I've eaten in this country so I decided to grow them - the same decision-making I used when I grew cherry tomatoes. That's also the fun part about growing crops. When you buy something from the store and you like it, you can take its seeds and grow it yourself. It probably wouldn't save you time and money but it's enjoyable and you learn something from it.
Starting Indoors
We usually buy a bag of potatoes and some of them sprout over time or get those white bumps on the surface. We should probably do a better job in storing them but it doesn't matter because that's exactly what I wanted anyway. Once the potatoes have sprouted, I buried them in a soil mix (coco coir, soil, perlite, rice hull) in a grow bag. I left the bag under a table and waited for green plants to come out. It took maybe two weeks or more before I saw some green coming out of the soil but soon after that, they started growing really fast.
Moving Outside
In April, I moved the bags outside on the balcony. I watered them every few days. To be honest, I don't remember. I only just started using a tracker for my plants. I probably fertilised them too often as well. Almost every week when the plants have grown tall enough, I would "hill" them or add more soil until most of the plants are covered. Roots are supposed to grow from the buried stems and those roots should grow potatoes. This process was easier using a grow bag because I just had to keep unfolding the bag every time I added more soil. I noticed some roots growing out through the bags but apparently, this doesn't really harm the plants because those roots will be air-pruned anyway or when the roots exposed to dry air stops growing and trigger the plants to grow new roots.
By the second week of May, the leaves have exploded. I even saw some flowering. I read online that these could be caused by too much fertiliser. I have some hydroponics plants and whenever I re-filled their containers, I mixed the leftover nutrients with more water and used it to water my potato plants. I should take note not to do that in the future.
The leaves started browning around the second week of June. I was excited and nervous because I couldn't see if there's actually anything growing in there. I was afraid I might have messed up too much and end up growing nothing in the end. I just kept in mind that I'm just doing it for fun and to learn for the first time.
I had three grow bags and they didn't brown at the same phase. By the end of June, the one in the middle had all its leaves turn brown. I put one hand in there and felt a potato! It was an amazing feeling! I actually grew something. I excitedly called my boyfriend over to the balcony to feel it himself. Is this how people feel when a child kicks inside them for the first time? At this point, I wasn't sure how much potatoes I will get but something actually grew and for a first-timer like me, that's awesome.
Harvesting and Curing
After a few more days, I was ready to harvest the potatoes.
I put the potatoes in a basket and covered them up with some cloth. I made sure there's enough airflow but that light doesn't pass through. I read that this process is called "curing". It's done to thicken the skin of the potatoes, let some "wounds" heal, and prepare them for storage. You are not supposed to wash them until you're ready to cook them. I just removed as much dirt as I could before curing.
Since there weren't many potatoes, I decided to cook them all after a week.
I paired the potatoes with some pork steak covered in mushrooms and gravy. They were delicious! I can't wait to harvest the two other bags. Maybe I can grow another batch before Winter comes.
Prior to this experience, I had the mental image of potatoes just growing in the void underground. Sure, I've seen some time-lapse of potatoes growing underground and I know how the potatoes are formed but I felt like I only truly "knew" when I dug them up and plucked each one off the roots. It's really like plucking an apple off its stem. The mark that it left on each potato, I don't think I've ever noticed them in my years of buying potatoes from the grocery stores. I saw the marks but never really cared or understood what they were.
What's Next?
- I want to see how the other two grow bags perform. Maybe they will produce more and bigger potatoes. I will post an update.
- Learning from my mistakes:
- I will keep a tracker from now on to prevent fertilising too often. Maybe my hydroponics nutrients is not the best for this purpose as well, I have to do some research on that.
- It's possible that I put too many seed potatoes in one bag. That could have led to having many potatoes but most of them in smaller sizes. I don't remember how much I put in one bag, could use a tracker there as well!
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