Gardener James Prigioni set out to see if an Amazon shipping box would hold up as a planter for potatoes. He took a basic single-walled Amazon box, lined it with dried leaves to help with moisture retention, added four to five inches of soil (his own homegrown soil he makes), added three dark red seed potatoes, covered them with more soil, added a fertilizer, then watered them.
He also planted a second, smaller Amazon box with two white seed potatoes, following the same steps.
Two weeks later, he had potato plants growing out of the soil. Ten days after that, the boxes were filled with lush plants.
Wait… Potatoes have seeds?
Yes, it’s a flowering plant. The fruit look like tomatoes but are poisonous. But sowing seeds has some disadvantages for potatoes.
First, unless you take precautions the plants you grow will cross with others around, you’ll end up with a mish mash of variety characteristics in the progeny. Maybe good, maybe bad.
Second, any tubers your sown seeds make in the first year will be tiny, it might take several years of keeping tubers and replanting before you get anything worth eating.
So unless you’re experimenting it’s more productive to not eat a few tubers and replant them for the next years crop. More consistent flavour and a bigger crop.
Thanks for this gardening lesson !! We always replanted old potatoes and they always growed the year after!
From my experience… The potato was the seed ! Sorry if I sound dumb 😶
You need to squeeze all the juice out first