Potatoes are right up there on our list of important vegetables to grow at home. First off, because they are a critical crop to eat organically. According to studies by the USDA, Consumer Reports and the Environmental Working Group, 79.3% of potatoes sampled were found to contain pesticides. Yikes. Secondly, because you can grow so many more varieties of potatoes than you can find in stores. (One of our suppliers offers over 75 varieties.) And lastly, because there’s nothing quite like a fresh potato from the garden, cooked up with a little butter (or rosemary and olive oil) on top. Yum!
Growing potatoes in the traditional manner (i.e. in the ground) can be kind of a love-hate experience. When you unearth hundreds of tasty morsels hidden in the soil it’s a wonderful discovery; but then in the months after the harvest, when you have volunteer potatoes sprouting up in places where you don’t want them, it can be annoying. No matter how thoroughly you think you harvest, there’s always that one (or ten!) miniscule marble-sized spud that goes unnoticed and starts replicating. In general we love plants that re-sow but having potatoes popping up underneath and in the midst of other planting areas can be a little unwieldy especially in a smaller home garden.
So one handy alternative is to isolate your potatoes by planting in potato towers. This is also a great option for people with limited space. The basic idea is to plant the potatoes in an upright structure (usually some kind of wire tube) so that at harvest time you can just open the tower and all your potatoes spill out above ground. And the extra bonus is that this very tidy and contained approach can also provide higher yields.
There are various approaches to constructing potato towers but one of the most cost-effective methods we use is with 4’ chicken wire and 3’ bamboo fencing fastened into and 2′ diameter tower. You can experiment with different sizes, but we find these dimensions to be ideal in terms of ability to load soil and compost from above.
Once the towers are constructed, we plant by laying down a bed of soil, then the potatoes, then a layer of compost followed by a layer of straw. When the first potato leaves emerge we add on another thin layer of compost and more straw. As leaves continue to emerge we keep mulching with straw only.
We like to plant lots of varieties, but some of our standards that we always recommend to clients are German Butterball, Yellow Finn, Rose Finn, Banana Fingerling and Bintje. This is a very flavorful, high-yielding mix that includes mid-season and long-season varieties. If you are interested in having your own potato towers, give us a call and we can set them up for you!