I’ve seen very fancy potato bins or towers out there, but this is seriously the easiest
Potato Growing Method ever!
I’ve done a post in the past on this but I decided to do it again.
Simply decide where you are going to build your tower in the garden. I chose at the end of two rows in my vegi bed. I loosened the soil of the spot about 2′ across then piled on rich compost to form a mound.
I laid the potatoes with their ‘eyes’ outward facing and then wrapped the mound with green plastic fencing. To keep it in place I weaved bamboo stakes through the fence mesh into the ground.
I’ve used the same rolls of fencing and bamboo stakes for years!
Something I’m doing slightly different this year is to not bury the potato’s with soil but to top them with straw ( not hay, less weed seeds ) right away instead of letting them leaf out first.
This year just straw…
Last year I let it leaf out first…
Then I added the straw once it got about a foot tall. I just kept adding more straw as it grew.
My challenge the last two years wasn’t the method, but the potatoes themselves! The first time I tried this method was with gourmet purple potatoes which I didn’t get a high yield from.
The second year was with Yukon Gold, but I soon learned that this type of potato would not respond well to this method as it was a determinate potato and not an indeterminate. Learn more about this is my last post on this topic, You say Potato.
So far so good… the potato’s are growing well in almost no soil and only straw. I’ll do an update when it’s harvest time. Stay tuned….