This is what failure looks like. Out of two large potato boxes, this is all I got.

Well, all of the foliage of the potatoes in my potato box died so I decided to take the boxes apart and harvest my 200 lbs of potatoes.   Imagine my shock when I took the sides down from the box growing the red La Soda’s and found — NOTHING!!!  That is right, nothing.  Not a single little potato.  So, much discouraged, I proceeded to take apart the box containing the white Keenebec’s.  I was relieved to discover that this box was not a total failure.  I found one tiny little potato, smaller than a ping pong ball.  So, I am calling both boxes failures. 

I don’t yet know what went wrong.  I followed the instructions that I found on the web very carefully.  I spent quite a bit of time, effort and money on this and it was a complete and total disaster.  I will be doing some research to see if I can get to the bottom of this mystery.

Everything looked so good in April. I really cannot figure out what went wrong.

I just cannot yet accept that this is a bad method for growing potatoes.  There are just too many magazine articles and web posts about it for it to be an unsound method.  Right now, I am going to write this off to a bad year.  My friend Cynthia Mueller tried to grow several varieies of potatoes in her BCS garden and she had dismal luck as well.  As I have talked to other gardeners I have found that this was a hit and miss year for potatoes in general.  Some folks did well, but many folks that I have talked to have not had any luck either.

I am not a quitter.  I will try this experiment again in the fall. Fall potatoes are a bit trickier than spring potatoes but I am going to try nonetheless.