We found a great how-to make a potato barrel article in Scott Meyer's The City Homesteader. We wanted to use a bit less space, experiment with the idea and hopefully prevent something from eating them. This is how we did it for about $20 from a local garden store (we already have a drill). Materials:
Step 1: Drill holes in the bottom of the barrel Step 2: Set up a brick or cinderblock platform for air flow and drainage outside in an area that gets at least 6hrs of sunlight daily. Step 3: Fill the barrel with 6" of a 1/3 potting soil/compost mix 2/3 peat moss mix Step 4: Plant the potatoes eyes up as deep as they are large. We cut ours into small 1" x 1" chunks right before planting. Step 5: Water well. Keep moist but not too damp. Step 6: As they grow, continue to fill the bucket with the same mixture up to the potato's top leaves, until the bucket is full. Step 7: Harvest. We've read that in general that you should wait until after the leaves die back to harvest. You can just tip over the barrel if you have a place to lay them or dig them out. We haven't done this so if this changes significantly we'll let you know.
We just wanted to give you the quick run-down - it only took less than an hour to put together once we had all the materials. For further reading, Mother Earth News provides the City Homesteader from the book here.
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