This was the year of fighting with gophers. They kept attacking and eating all of my potato and tomato plants’ roots. They would eat all the roots and leave the poor remaining green top of the plant on the ground. It was so sad to find this every morning. I tried everything to keep them out but to no avail. So I put the remaining potato plants in big buckets.

Here is a photo of one of the potato plants I saved. They seemed to grow okay in the buckets but not a lot of room for them. When the plants were done growing and dried up, I just turned the buckets over and shook out the potatoes. The harvest was not too great but I did manage to get some small potatoes from growing them in buckets.

I figured it was better to get some small potatoes this year rather than just leaving them in the ground for the gophers to eat. So this is my useful idea for saving potato plants if you are facing a similar problem.