1 Feb 2011
potato practice progress
by Lou Altamura
My indoor potato growing experiment is nearly a month old now, and there has been huge progress.
Today, this young plant stands in at 7 inches tall. There has been quite a growth spurt in the past week or two, probably because the stem is getting closer to the fluorescent lamp.
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| nice root growth, but not good for edible potatoes |
I was hoping to waiting until it was a little taller and more leafy before I started adding more soil, but I noticed that roots were starting to poke out of the soil. I've been reading that this sort of thing can lead to green potatoes, so I decided to take action.
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| please do not allow children to play in your potato planter |
I dumped about 2-3 more inches of soil into the container, which covered up the roots nicely and still left about 5 inches of foilage above the soil line. There really wasn't much in terms of leaves at points on the stem lower than this, so I don't think that this should stress the plant much.
Now that this is working out so well, I am thinking about starting a second kitty litter box planter. Two of these might give me few pounds of potatoes well before any of my outdoor crop will be even close to harvesting.
