Tag Archives: potato

Growing Potatoes in a Bucket

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.

Growing potatoes in a bucket

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.

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Early Potatoes

Here is my first harvest from the early potatoes I planted this year. These were grown from some leftover little potatoes from last year’s crop that I planted early this spring.

First Harvest Potatoes

I was pleased how my seedling potatoes that I planted, sprouted and grew so nicely. The tops died off recently and I dug up the potatoes yesterday. It is always fun, like a game to dig and find the potatoes. This harvest of potatoes was from just two plants. I still have many more but this was from the first planting which were ready for harvest. Now I have some nice homegrown potatoes for breakfast to cook tomorrow!

A useful tip: As these are early potatoes, the skins are thin and can not be stored long. You want to use early potatoes right away as they will only store for about a week or so.

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Potato Bacon Soup from Home Food Storage

I have been enjoying potato bacon soup that I make from my home storage food reserves. I thought I’d post about using Augason creamy potato soup mix. I have a few #10 cans of this soup mix and love using it to make my potato bacon soup. This is not a paid review for Augason’s but rather just my unsolicited opinion of the product.

They say you should use and perfect your cooking with home storage foods and that’s just how I discovered my version of this potato bacon soup.

I use 1-1/3 cups of the soup mix, along with the recommended 4-1/2 cups of water. But then I add several dashes of Worcestershire sauce, several dashes of pepper, at least a cup of cut-up potatoes, and finally about 4-5 slices of cooked bacon.

Chopped up the bacon into small bits as shown.

I throw it all in my crockpot and cook on high for about 4 hours and then just on low until ready to eat.

Results are outstanding and makes enough homemade soup for at least 2 meals for hubby and I.

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