Week 5 - Potato Towers

FoFor episode/article 5 for This Week in the Garden, we’ll cover potato towers. Potato towers are an alternative way to grow potatoes in the hope of reducing damage during harvest. In this episode, I’ll cover my experiment with potato towers. We’ll also have a quick slideshow of the gardens submitted during our giveaway, so check out what’s growing!

Potatoes are an odd plant in the same family as tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. The part we eat is grown underground, attached to the stem, and is called a tuber. The rest of the plant, the leaves, stems, and tomato-like fruit, are toxic. Tuber harvest can be difficult for first-time gardeners, as they are soft underground, and digging with a shovel can result in damage to the potato. This isn’t usually a problem if you are growing a few potatoes for your family, but can be a nuisance if you’re growing a large number of potatoes.

Potato towers are an interesting solution to this problem. The premise of these towers is to grow the potatoes above-ground in straw/soil cages. The green, photosynthetic parts of the plants grow through the cage, while the potatoes grow in the straw/soil center. Once the green portions have dried up in the middle of the summer, the potatoes are ready to harvest. With a potato tower, all you need to do is open the cage, and the soil and potatoes will fall right out!

Gardens around Town

For my experiment with potato towers, I used extra fencing from the garden. I cut the five-foot fencing into five-foot sections to make the tube. I cut these in half because it was difficult to access the bottoms of the towers when I tried adding the soil. I used soil with high organic matter because potatoes like rich, nutrient-filled soil. I also added a few sprinkles of 10-10-10 fertilizer along the way. My first issue (maybe?) was that I used hay instead of straw around the edges. Hay is a little more dense than straw and it took my potatoes a while to emerge.

Prior to all of this, I cut my seed potatoes in half and allowed them to harden for 48 hours. This gives the potatoes a little protection from diseases and allowed me to plant more potato plants. After 48 hours I placed these potato cuts at one foot and two feet in the towers and covered them with soil and hay, making sure that the potato eyes were pointed out of the tower. I watered the towers about every other day, and it took about four weeks for the potatoes to emerge. I think this due in part to the hay and the way I planted the potatoes. Next year, I plan on planting the potatoes through the cage, because I think they got buried as the towers settled.

That’s where we’re at now with the potato tower experiment. I’ll post an update before harvest, and I’ll also film the harvest. In the meantime, check out our website where we store all of our articles/videos and fill out our form if you have any comments or questions. And of course, stay tuned until next time from This Week in the Garden.

-Adam