Growing Potatoes in a Barrel

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by Adobestock/faithie

Learn how to grow potatoes in a barrel with these step-by-step instructions for creating and using a potato barrel. If you have a sunny spot to place a garbage can, you can grow your potatoes!

  1. Start in spring. Potatoes take all season to fully mature, so begin this project around your average last frost date (which you can find out from your county extension agent).
  2. Select the spuds. They grow from chunks of last year’s crop — chunks with an “eye,” or rootlet, are referred to as “seed potatoes.” Each “eye” produces a cluster of new tubers. You can find countless potato varieties in nurseries and online, and you can use any one you want, but small to medium-size ones work best in a barrel. Be sure to get certified disease-free seed potatoes, because they can suffer from nasty problems like scab.
  3. Pick a barrel. Plain or fancy, it’s your call. Gardening catalogs and Web sites offer barrels specifically designed for growing potatoes. But they are mostly about being more attractive — not functionally better — than one you make at home out of a whiskey barrel or a common trash can. If your container has been used before, be sure to scrub it out well to get rid of fungi that might cause your potatoes to rot before you harvest them.
  • Updated on Apr 14, 2023
  • Originally Published on May 26, 2011
Tagged with: potato growing, potato planter
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