Ever feel like potatoes are out to get you? I mean, sure, they’re versatile, delicious, and packed with vitamins. And yes, if you manage to grow them successfully, you’ll have a stash that lasts all winter (take that, tomatoes!). But oh boy, can they be a handful.
I’ve had my share of potato nightmares. Not because of their creepy “eyes” or my grandma’s warnings about raw potatoes being poisonous (thanks for that, Grandma). It’s more about their growing demands, the space they hog, and the sneaky diseases they can introduce into your garden. Plus, let’s not forget they’re like a gourmet meal for voles.
But what if I told you there’s a way to bypass all this drama and still grow a bumper crop of spuds? Enter: the potato tower. This nifty little invention is perfect for anyone with less-than-ideal soil or limited space. With a potato tower, you can grow 20 pounds of spuds in an area less than 4 square feet.
Here’s the lowdown on how to build your very own potato tower.
Understanding the Hype Around Potato Towers
Potato towers are highly recommended for urban gardeners. They’re prized for their space-saving qualities and ability to produce a substantial amount of potatoes in a compact area.
However, the real world often demands more than theoretical success, so we decided to test this method. Despite glowing recommendations across various gardening communities, a noticeable gap in concrete results left us curious.
We often saw incomplete projects or less-than-stellar harvest reports. It was high time to dive deep and offer firsthand insights.
Building Your Potato Tower: Step-by-Step Instructions
What You Need:
- Wire cutters
- Wire fencing or chicken wire (4.5 feet long, 3.5 feet high)
- Rebar wire
- One piece of 5-foot-tall rebar
- Two bales of straw (not hay!)
- Shovel
- Compost
- Seed potatoes (use a mix of varieties for an attractive effect), 5 pounds for each tower
1: Selecting The Right Variety To Grow
Here’s a big secret for growing in towers—some varieties perform way better than others! I initially used a mix of commercial seed potatoes and some red potatoes that had begun sprouting in storage. It turned out that commercial potatoes often have sprouting inhibitors applied, which can hamper growth.
I’ve had great success growing Yukon Gold, Red Potatoes, New Potatoes, Fingerlings, and heirloom varieties like Adirondack Blue and Purple Majesty potatoes. Yukon Golds and ‘Red Norland’ are definitely my go-to for the main potato crop. Their buttery, tender flavor is hard to beat! They perform incredibly well in the towers with good growth and great yields. One potato that just doesn’t seem to work well in a tower is the Russet variety. I’ve tried for a few years now, and they just never seem to develop into a good crop.
2: Construct a Sturdy Frame For the tower
Use wire cutters to snip out a section of wire fencing to create a cylindrical bin, about 1½ to 2 feet in diameter. I prefer to use fencing that is 4 feet tall because I can still reach into the tower to plant it even though I’m only 5 feet 3 inches tall. Use rebar wire to tie the fence ends together.
To give the bin extra stability, attach it to a rebar post. Pound the post flush with the back of the inside of the bin, and wire the bin to the post. If you have trouble with voles, add a piece of fencing with small holes at the bottom of the container to prevent the critters from burrowing into it.
3: Filling the Tower: Layering and Planting
The actual planting process contained several key steps:
- Base Layer: Starting with a healthy layer of our soil mix, about two to four inches thick.
- Planting the Seed Potatoes: Around the perimeter of this base, we placed our seed potatoes, spacing them roughly six inches apart from the edge and each other.
- Stacking Up: We repeated the layering — soil, potatoes, soil — pressing down lightly after each addition to ensure the mix was firm and secure.
4: Continue Building the Tower
Create additional layers comprised of a straw “nest,” compost, and potatoes until you reach 4 inches from the top of the bin. Each layer should be about a foot deep. Finish off the tower with a layer of potatoes spaced evenly across the top. Pour a 5-inch-deep layer of compost over the potatoes, and cover with a few handfuls of straw. These uppermost potatoes will sprout out of the top of the bin.
5: Watering and Growth
We watered initially by trickling water around the central stability pole. Then, we adjusted our approach based on the moisture level of the soil and weather conditions, emphasizing not to drown the sprouting plants. Within a few weeks, we saw green sprouts pushing through the soil, a sign that our efforts were taking root—literally.
Step 6: Watch It Grow, Tip It Over, and Harvest the Spuds
We opted for an early harvest at 90 days due to uneven growth. We dismantled the tower by removing the stakes and tipping it onto a tarp, allowing us to sift through the dirt and harvest the potatoes. The yield was modest, at best. The commercial seed potatoes underperformed, while the spontaneously sprouted red potatoes did remarkably better.
Reflections and Future Plans
While not completely disheartened by the modest results, we recognized areas for improvement. For the next round, we plan to solely use organically sourced “chitting” potatoes, specifically red varieties or perhaps fingerlings, to gauge the method’s effectiveness truly. We also intend to make minor tweaks in the tower’s structure and possibly explore other biodegradable options to retain moisture better.
Conclusion: A Work in Progress
The potato tower experiment was as enlightening as it was humbling. We entered with high hopes, fueled by community anecdotes and theoretical benefits, only to find that the real outcome requires patience, adaptation, and a willingness to learn from less-than-perfect outcomes.
However, the spirit of experimentation is what keeps gardening exciting. As we plan our next potato tower, we are equipped with newfound knowledge and an even greater resolve to turn small potatoes into a bountiful harvest.
We’d love to hear from you in the comments—have you tried the potato tower method, and what were your results? Any tips or tricks you’d like to share would be incredibly valuable as we chit out more potatoes and prepare for round two. Stay safe and keep gardening!
