Just don't try to grow them in plastic buckets.
This was my first attempt at potatoes. I will be attempting again next year. Potatoes are a thing with me. I get grumpy if I don't have potato products for several days. My husband goes and gets me french fries the way some partners buy chocolate. Growing potatoes isn't so much an attempt to cut the food bill as it is an attempt to keep living with me acceptable. We planted two varieties, Russet (the potato-who-should-not-be) and Blue potatoes (the ones that are purple all the way though. I like colors. Deal with it.)We decided to try mounding the potatoes in 5 gallon plastic paint buckets.
Do not do this. This is a poor decision.
My poor potatoes are cooking in their buckets. The plastic is keeping too much heat, and reflecting too much light onto the undersides of the leaves. I've lost 2 or 3 plants out of the 7 I planted. The ones that are still alive are sheltered and shaded by my pumpkins. The pumpkins are trying to take over the garden and in doing so have sent out vines between the potato buckets. The potatoes who live in the shade of their leaves are still alive. I figure they're being kept cooler and the sun isn't reflecting off their plastic prisons to roast them alive.
So yeah. Next year we're doing wood or cloth. No more plastic.
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