Planting Potatoes

I had told myself I wasn't going to try planting potatoes this year. I tried a method last year that I'd seen online. (Probably a big mistake to learn it there.) Anyway, I planted potatoes in very good soil into feed bags. They grew beautifully. The problem is, they didn't make potatoes. Just beautiful plants! That's not what I wanted. I wanted something we could eat.

Those ^^ are the potatoes in feed sacks.

See how beautifully they started out?

I even put some in containers!

So, I swore off planting potatoes. They take up a lot of room and I only have raised beds to plant them in.

I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess. Either that or I really want to get this potato growing thing down well enough that I can grow enough for us to have at least 6 months' worth, if not more. So, the other day I headed back out to the garden and planted...you guessed it...potatoes. This time I did a more traditional method of planting and put them in the dirt of one of my deeper raised beds. Keeping my fingers crossed this works! I used potatoes from my storage that were trying to sprout anyway. I did NOT cut them. They were fairly small anyway. I did put them about 2 feet apart in the bed and covered them well. I had amended the bed with well-rotted hay.

Yes, I know potatoes can be bought pretty cheaply year round, but just being able to produce them here, on the Mini Homestead, would be another step toward food independence. So, without further ado, here's my video from when I planted the potatoes. Any suggestions are always welcomed!