Growing potatoes

I use a barrel cut in half to grow sweet potatoes, so far, but I am going to build one of these…

Article from Green Roof Growers

Potato Box

I have a small strip of land that gets 6 hours of sun a day. It’s the perfect spot to try growing potatoes. Vertically. In a box.

I got the idea from this article in the Seattle Times. The hook is that you can grow a lot of potatoes in a tiny space; just what I need.

Greg Lutovsky, who has been growing potatoes as a business since 1993, says you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 square feet. All it takes is some lumber, seed potatoes and careful attention to watering.

The story was enough to get me started, but it’s a little short on practical advice. For that I turned to Sinfonian, who meticulously documented his potato-in-a-box efforts last year.

how to store potatoes. With a bit of luck, I’ll be doing that this fall.
If you want to grow vertically, there are several alternatives to choose from: grow bags, wire cages, stacked tires, large containers. All had drawbacks, so I chose to make my 3’x3′ bin out of cedar fencing boards and southern yellow pine. I gave all the pieces a coat of linseed oil, hoping that this will protect the wood from rotting.

I bought, and then chitted, 3 pounds of Inca Gold seed potatoes from Ronniger Potato Farm. Inca Gold are late season potatoes, an important detail for this type of growing. According to Sinfonian, early season varieties only set fruit once, making them bad candidates for potato towers. You’ll end up with a few at the bottom of the box and that’s it.

I just planted my seed potatoes today. As they grow, I’ll add more cedar boards to the sides of my box and cover them with dirt.