Growing potatoes indoors in the winter?
Growing Potatoes indoors in the winter?
Why not?!
These are the last of the garden potatoes of 2022. Our biggest crop so far, though we didn’t actually weigh the yield.
I had these potatoes that started to sprout in December or January. So, on a lark, I thought let’s plant them. See what happens.
Turns out, it’s a thing! Growing Potatoes indoors in the winter?
You can totally grow potatoes indoors in Canada in the winter.
Why am I only hearing about this now?!
The plants shown above? Planted in early February. Once I pulled the planters in from the back yard and let them thaw out for literally a week! December and January hit 30 below. The soil was frozen solid. They were heavy too, I might add.
I planted 5 “chits” in each planter about 3 weeks apart. The first 5 were from our garden that sprouted. Then, I planted 5 more that were store bought and started sprouting.
I have no extra lighting to give them. I have moved them around to find the sunniest spot that I can protect them from the dog. Or, rather, protect the dog from the potatoes. Which is in the office. It has a western facing window. That’s it. This brings up an important point.
POTATOES ARE POISONOUS TO DOGS! IF YOUR GOING TO TRY THIS, MAKE SURE YOU CAN KEEP YOUR POOCH FROM EATING THE PLANTS!!
You can see in the pictures, the black mesh. That worked until the plants start growing through it. You could adjust the mesh if you need too. It is working so far.
So, Growing potatoes indoors in the winter from here?….
Bloom or not, they should be ready for harvest around the first of May. I didn’t fill the pots full when I planted them originally. Now it’s the beginning of March, and I filled the top 4-6 inches of the planter with soil. Just soil that I had around mixed with some less than ideal worm compost. (It dried weird and formed little rocks of compost that I can’t crush, so it’s hard to do anything with.)
Growing Potatoes Indoors In The Winter – The Learning
I have come to learn that, unlike some root vegetables, potatoes don’t really “mine” into the soil. Like, at all. If the ground around them is the least bit hard, they just won’t grow into the soil. They grow on top. This is why they “hill up” potatoes in the field.
It is no different in the house. The yield we got from this…..experiment, was a little disappointing. To say the least. So much so that I didn’t even take a picture of them. What I will do next time, and what I will recommend to everyone wanting to try this is, to get a vessel of some sort that you can add soil to, as the potatoes grow. To simulate “hilling”. I believe that was my mistake. I just let them grow into vines. They were healthy plants, however not high yielding ones.
So, what I am going to try this year is to keep the plant between 6 and 12 inches above the soil and to add sides to the planter, somehow. Once the plant gets over 12 inches above the soil in the planter, I’ll add 6 inches of soil.
Let’s see how that goes.
2024 Update
The yield from the 2022 experiment was less than awe-inspiring. Only a few spuds. But, I realize now what I did wrong. I didn’t “hill” them up.
In the 2023 garden (picture above), I learned that potatoes do not mine, like carrots or other root crops. If the ground is the least bit hard, the tubers will just grow in whatever ground was loosened for the planting. Or, just below the soil level and get sunburned. Hence, why potato farmers hill their crops. Or at least in gardens they do.
So, in the 2023 attempt to grow potatoes indoors in the winter, I started with a lower container and filled it with soil as the plants grew. Once the first container was full, I cut the bottom out of another container and stacked them. I continue to do that, trying not to bury more than 6″ or 8″ of the plant at a time. But I think there were a couple of instances where a solid foot got buried. They grow fast.
Although it’s the middle of March, and they have a couple of months left before I dump them out. I can already tell you a couple of things I will do differently next year. Every year, we learn, right?
Have the soil and containers ready beforehand. Half my issues with this method is trying to find containers to cut the bottom out of, and all my soil is frozen solid. Luckily, I kept these pots from trees and shrubs I planted this summer, and garden soil is cheap in January. But, I will be better prepared next year.
The other thing is I am concerned that the water is not reaching the middle of the stack. I can water from the top and bottom, but next year, I will install some sort of watering column that I can get water through the whole stack of pots. We will see what happens in May when I dump them out, but I think that will be better.Which brings me to another point.
If I dump these things out in the office, where they are. It’s gonna make a mess. So I need to have a dolly or something to get them outside. I should have thought of that before. Oh well,that’s May’s problem.
Right now, they are easily 4 feet tall, so I think stability will be an issue before May’s harvest.
I will let you know how it goes.