I know! I felt the same way a few weeks ago when two of my containers were ready to harvest. I'm still waiting on some in the ground and my two remaining containers. This time I think I'll let the kids help me empty the containers. It was sooooo much fun! Kim Here is a link that might be useful: Kim's Garden

Tom, "John, are you using the white bags? I'd be concerned about the dyes and chemicals in the other colors.... " Good point. Heres what they (Greenbag Inc) say... "Is made from non-toxic, non-corrosive materials and safe color-fast dyes". I'm interested in these for several reasons, drainage, cooling and cost. I know they drain well, I don't think you could ever fill one with a garden hose. The upside down tomato bag I tried last spring stayed cool and it was black. The ones from Publix are a buck and I hear W mart's are cheaper. So I'll give it a try. john

Paula, The hardest part about growing potatoes in above-ground containers is keeping them cool enough. If the plants and their soil get too hot, you will get a poor crop. When I grow them in containers, I put a row of other containers all around the potato containers so that the outer countainers absorb the heat and sunlight and shade the inner containers. When I've grown potatoes in a really big container (the 200 gallon galvanized stock tank) I planted trailing plants around the edges of the stock tank so that the trailing plants would hang down over the sides of the tank, shading it, and helping keep the sides from absorbing too much heat. Even with that, I felt like the harvest from the stock tank was poor compared to the harvest from in-ground plants growing in a raised bed 5' away. I just think the soil in the tank got too hot despite my efforts to shade it. It wasn't a poor harvest overall, and the plants in the stock tank did produce, but they produced smaller potatoes and fewer of them than the ones in the raised bed. That's the issue with potatoes in containers in our climate. It isn't just the late day sun that will be an issue by late May---it will be the all-day sun. If you could put them in a place where something will shade the containers (not necessarily the plants themselves--but the sides of the containers), that would help. Remember that when you grow a plant above ground in a container, you are exposing it to temperatures roughly one zone higher than your normal zone, so if you are in zone 7a, then your potatoes will be growing in zone 8a conditions due to the lack of ground around them to insulate them. That one zone difference works the opposite in cold weather---due to a lack of insulation from the ground, the container plantings are growing one zone colder in cold weather. You could work around that by putting an early variety of potatoes in the containers so they'd get most of their growth done before the soil temp hits the range where tuber initiation ceases, which is 85 degrees. I think if you use a thermometer to check the soil temp in your potato bags in April and May every afternoon, like right when you come in from work, you could track the soil temp and see at which point it is hitting 85 degrees. At my house, that likely would be in late April or early May, though my in-ground soil temps don't start hitting the mid-80s until late May most years. This largely explains why I don't plant many, if any, potatoes in containers any more. If growing in containers was my only option, I'd do it and be happier with the lower yield because it is better than no yield at all. I'm not trying to talk you out of using the grow bigs, just pointing out that the challenge will be to keep the soil in them cool enough so you'll get a better harvest. For people in cooler climates than ours, potatoes do great in containers....but I'm talking about areas where folks think they're having a terrible heat wave if their high temperature exceeds 85 degrees on a "hot summer day". Dawn

Potatoes in bags? Question has already been answered. Rodney