I have used the same idea with sweet potato slips. I only produced 2 to 3
per container, but it was better than nothing if you dont have the room to
plant more.

Dwayne

"TimB" wrote in message
news
As promised early in the season.

The bushel basket method is, basically, get an old bushel basket or
laundry
basket (not as picturesque of course) or anything of similar size and
porosity, and put some potting soil in the bottom, then one hill's worth
of
seed potatoes (I used 4 halves per basket), and cover with more potting
soil. As the season progresses, add more potting soil before any danger
of
taters working their way to the top.

Plain old white skinned certified seed potatoes, which normally have a few
big ones and a lot of small ones fine for cooking or mashing.

Somewhat rainy year this year. It helped, probably, to have the potatoes
up
out of the ground.

Results we

Harvest was of course easy. Turn the basket upside down, pick them up.
No
cut potatoes, none left undiscovered.

Size was good, larger than usual. Potatoes are uniformly nice looking,
several bakers per hill.

Yield was probably about the same *number* of potatoes per hill as usual,
just that more of them were larger. 3-6 pounds per basket, I'd say.

Expenses increased due to the potting soil addition, but I used only
acceptable and not great potting soil. And I'm left with a basket half
full of handy spent potting soil to turn in.

Altogether, a good experience. And our kids thought of it as a nice
science
experiment too. Yield and quality were improved, along with cost. Not
sure
I could have done it to replace the total potato consumption of our
family,
but perhaps it would be possible given longer, multi-hill enclosures of
some
sort.