Hi Ellyce, I believe we did grow potatoes over winter or at least for a winter harvest when we were living in zone 10a, potatoes like to grow in temperatures that are 50-80 degrees F so it likely depends on how cold your winter months are. I am sure the potatoes themselves can handle some colder weather overnight (but no hard freezes) as long as it warms up more during the day but if your summer weather is more temperate (average of 80 degrees F or less), you can likely plant potatoes now and harvest before winter sets in. If you do get hot summer weather and unless you really want to grow potatoes this year (or winter), I think you will likely find more success with an late winter/early spring planting of potatoes. Hope that helps and have fun growing!

Hi Joy, we have yet to actually grow sweet potatoes but we keep telling ourselves that we need to start! Sweet potatoes just require a longer and warmer growing season than regular potatoes but you can definitely grow them in grow bags or containers all the same. Hope that helps and have fun growing!

Hi Mary, yes we typically save the soil for the following season and re-amend the bags with additional fresh soil and compost upon planting. Last year some of our potatoes developed scab so we didn’t save any of the soil from those bags, hope that helps and have fun growing!

Thanks for all the great information on planting potatoes in bags. Do you use the same soil (with additional compost) for the next year’s planting of potatoes? Any disease issues?

Hi Janna, straw can be hard to come by with any type of confirmation on if it was sprayed or not. In the past we have used straw from a local feed store to build up a hot compost pile and thankfully didn’t have any issues with the final product. Now we typically don’t use straw for growing potatoes because it is less easy to come by for us, Epic Gardening does carry a variety of straw to use as mulch but you may want to reach out to local feed stores to see if they have any information on how the straw was grown as it’s easier to source locally. I am less concerned with the straw containing seeds than I am with the straw being spray with herbicides or pesticides. Hope that helps and have fun growing!