Making A Sack-O-Potatoes That ROCKS!

The morning was a little wet, as evidenced by the small creek forming between the yards. It wasn't a problem though, there was inside work to be done including making my sacko-potatoes. I read on-line that you can get great yields growing potatoes in containers. The trick is to plant the spuds and then every few days add more dirt to the container so that the stem stays covered.

Some people accomplish this by growing them in tires and gradually adding more dirt and tires until there is a stack of tires and potatoes. Other people just take a bag of soil, slit a few holes in it and stick their spuds inside. I'm guessing the yields with that method are not terrific. Neither of these methods fits my criteria for good looks in the garden. I don't care how many spuds I get, I don't want to look at a stack of old tires in the yard all summer.

The Brits have potato sacks that can be bought for this process. They have cute garden motiffs. Their sides fold down and then you gradually roll up the sides as you add dirt. I've looked around for them here but the closest thing I found was a green thing that was narrow and $25. Um no. During yesterday's manure musings I had a voila moment and figured out how to make my own sack-o potatoes.

I decided to use landscaping fabric, the good stuff. It breathes, it drains, it is strong, can be folded up and down and submits readily to the sewing machine. Now I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagine. I know how to thread the machine and sew a straight line and that's about it. That's pretty much all I needed for my sacko-potatoes. It took me about fifteen minutes to sew. I eyeballed it and took no measurements.

It came out pretty decent for a hurried first attempt. Now looking at this thing, you'll be wondering how this meets the attractiveness criteria. Well, I'll tell you. The beauty of my stacko-potatoes (copyright Mutiny in the Garden-heh) is that once the height of the structure gets tall enough to start looking fugly, I can slit holes in the side of the sack and plant pretty shallow rooted annuals. The stacko-potatoes will morph into a stacko-flowers with purple spuds fattening up inside. I'm very proud of my little homemade sack! I started the spuds in it this afternoon. Fingers crossed it works!

The afternoon dried up enough to move the woodpile from the future shade bed. In hind sight it was a dumb time to move the pile, waterlogged wood is heavy! It took a long time. The rain resumed right after the last moveable log was relcoated. I had to leave four behind because they were too heavy. Hopefully hubby can chainsaw them down in the next week or so. I 'll have things to plant in that location in the next week or so. Despite all the rain and weather weirdness it was a terrific weekend to garden. I hope you all enjoyed similar nice weather.