Po-ta-toes...the beginning

So, we're growing potatoes.

We're not using tires, because of the concern of leaching. We are, instead, reusing a 55g white plastic fuel barrel that was rigorously cleaned and rinsed prior to dirt-addition. We put the barrel up front where it should receive the most amount of sunlight for the yard (we think).

We planted the barrel with I believe 7 plants. We are also removing the flowers in the barrel, to see if this makes any difference in the results.

We're also using a mounding/hilling technique in one of the raised beds in the back yard. This particular raised bed has a bit of wind protection on three sides, and we've mounded up dirt to about 1.5 feet above the surface of the raised bed, so a total of about 2.5 - 3 feet of available dirt from the surface of the yard. We planted this bed with 6 plants total. We are not removing flowers from this patch to see if this makes any difference in the results.

The top three pictures were taken around the 23rd of June, 2011. I think we'd had the plants in the ground at this point for about 2-3 weeks. In addition, I should mention that we pre-started these plants in little 6" diameter plastic pots, and covered them with black mylar until the roots were growing like gangbusters. Then we planted them as you see them in the above photos.

I will add current photos shortly.