🥔 Grow Bag vs Raised Bed Potato experiment! #howtogrowpotatoes #growingpotatoes #gardenexperiments

[ActiveArtisan]

Can confirm. Raised bed is the way to grow!

[mcuten]

HOLY COW! That’s wild! Love the experiments!

[craigathonian]

Great experiment. Don't know if you tried this one yet, but could you do an experiment where the seed bulb is planted 1/2 way down in the bed, but start with only 1" of soil. Then keep adding more soil to raise the soil level as the plant gets taller. You do this through the whole growing season. The end result is supposed to yield 50% more.

[calmeilles]

For the grow bag don't fill it up immediately but add a few inches of soil each week as the horm grows. It'll double the crop. And you don't need fancy ones. Empty 50L fertiliser and compost bags with a few drainage holes poked in the bottom work fine.

[JohnRobinson-npdf]

It looks like you covered the ones in the grow bags with maybe a foot of soil, while the potatoes in the ground were covered by maybe six inches. I thought you were supposed to cover with a few inches as the sprouts appeared. Maybe that’s why the ones in the soil had more growth- they were buried properly and had more sun exposure.

[returnbasics]

I essentially did the same experiment this year and got pretty much the same results.

Here's why: potatoes don't like heat. They grow best in cool soil, which being grown in the ground is what provides that shelter from the sun. Grow bags or even over-sized pots (like trees would've been grown in at the store) get constant warmth from sunlight where being grown in the ground, the only warmth from sunlight is what the leaves of the plant are exposed to.

Unless you have no other choice due to a lack of land, opt to grow potatoes in the ground either directly or in raised beds where the soil temperatures will be naturally lower

[TheMonkey]

"Wait!"
*whistles, snap fingers, points*

Bucket nutrients dispersed semi-evenly in 3" band [roughly 1.3 cu foot of soil] potato planted, covered.
Grow bed nutrients poured into 6" wide hole [roughly 0.2 cu ft], with potato also placed among fertilizer, and covered.
Why are the potatoes different sizes?
Nutrient density and dispursion is key.

[richm]

I know you only had 60 seconds but important details you omitted. 1. Was the soil mix in the bed identical to that in the grow back? If not it's not a valid comparison. 2. Was it a determinate or indeterminate potato? Determinate potatoes don't grow upward - they only grow on the level they are planted. In a raised bed they have room to grow much wider meaning they take up a lot more real estate. In a bag you've only given them so much space. Using a bag with as much depth and lateral growth space is a fairer comparison. I use containers because I'm not willing to give up that much space in a bed and I use indeterminate potatoes which can grow upward, not just outward, to maximize harvest. 3. Air and water penetration are going to be very different in a plastic grow bag than in either a felt bag or in a raised bed. To be a fair test you'd have to ensure that the moisture content was equal in both all the time. In that plastic bag there is limited aeration, and excessive water can build up. 4. You buried them deep in the plastic bag limiting root depth, plus in plastic they can become root bound, choking off plant growth. In a felt or fabric bag they air prune rather than put their energy into a swirling, choked off root mass.

[AlleyCat-]

There's a couple reasons that i noticed for the differences & I'm sure there's a full length video that goes more into this then a short. But the difference i saw was the depth at which you planted both spuds, raised bed was shallow in comparison. And 2nd was that the grow bag, while tall, doesn't give you much width as the raised or in the regular ground garden beds do.
For the bag, you should have (as many have pointed out) put the same amount of soil on them as you did in the raised bed, let them grow until the 2nd set of leaves show then add more soil to just under the leaves & continue on until the top. You would most likely had a bigger outcome then this one, but also small in size. Great if you want the new potato size for soups & such.
You didn't mention how often you had to water either one. I will be trying this in buckets, but without the extra you put in. 😊

[tatiananaugolnykh]

A raised bed has more oxygen. Potatoes need it to grow. This is why they love being planted in hay, too 😊

[kypie]

I wonder if your experiment would be affected by using grow bags that allowed for air pruning (made of a felt fabric) (?) That would be cool if you could try that for comparison with the raised & in-ground beds

[colinlpeace]

Depends what kind of potatoes you have. Indeterminates are better for containers because you can add soil to make them propagate more tubers. Determinates want to spread out so the raised bed is better.

[derekfuqua]

The reason your beds did better, was because there was already an established ecosystem in the ground soil. The organic matter in compost is broken down by diverse organisms, into simple, plant solluble fertilizer. The bags do not contain the same ecosystem as the beds. Even if the same substrates were used.

[rogerroth]

I think the comments arevery good. He wad not trying to make things equal but just demonstrate the difference while being fair. Great video. Thanks.

[lukehumphrey]

It's probably to do with the amount of room the roots have to grow. More roots more shoots

[eduardochavacano]

Those soil and compose must cost more than the potatoes harvest.

[kaleidoscope]

I gre up farming. Plant on the ground properly and hill your potatoes after the leaves are going good. The size and amounts will be more and you can harvest twice. Take some of the new potatoes in late spring and again in August.
Plant early long before June.

[PossumMedic]

Thanks for showing results not just you planting them!

[cynthiaklug]

So glad you did this experiment! Thank you! 🥔❤

[aaronlegend]

Plants grow better outside of a confined space. Revolutionary knowledge.