Potato towers success?

Mickey328 said:

We tried this a couple of years ago and it went very well for a month or so. Then one day...all the plants were dead. We finally sussed out that they had "cooked" At about 5000 ft altitude, the sun here is very strong and with the roots raised, the soil just got so hot that we believe it killed them. We had even painted the boards white to help reflect. I believe we'll try again, but will rig up some sort of shade around the box so that just the top part gets the light. I think maybe if we keep a tarp around the box about a foot away from it, it may well help to keep that part shaded while allowing the tops to have the light. We'll have to build up the shade area as we build the box too, of course. If it doesn't work, we may just have to continue to buy our spuds.

We don't have adequate storage for many either, which is a pain. While we have a double attached garage and it's insulated, it gets beastly hot in there in the summer, and cold enough to freeze in parts of the winter. We do have a crawl space, and DH is in the process of digging down from the outside, we're not "there" yet. We're hoping to make a sort of root cellar out of it, so we'll have some area for storage of veggies, wine and various canned goods.

Click to expand...

A strong healthy potato plant will droop almost instantly when the moisture level drops below a certain point and they will not recover. The roots or tuber area averages about 22 C and changes little in most gardens. Stick a thermometer probe in the soil and monitor the temperature six inches down over a period of time.

I have enjoyed reading of your experiences. I too have tried the potato towers without the success they were supposed to have. Then I read an article about raising potatoes under leaves. I have tweaked (I guess that is the right spelling) the original process to something that has been very successful for me. I do not have specific weights or good pics but I'll explain what I do. My beds are all 4 ft. wide so I made a cage to surround the potato bed that is 18" high and is 10 ft. long. Each bed has three rows about a foot apart and plants are about 1 foot between. I lay the seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with about 6" compost. As they begin to grow I continually put grass clippings and whatever around the plants to keep the tubers covered and moist. When they die off I cover them with about 12" of leaves and harvest them when I need them. The leaves keep them from freezing. These pics are not the greatest but hopefully will give you an idea of what I do. In the first pic the potato beds are on the left, the plants have already died off.

When defining potato production I simply use the figure produced from one plant of one seed. Defining production using seed weight versus acre production is absolutely nonsensical, since a seed can be any size or weight. People have no idea regarding potato production. There is almost nothing on the internet regarding weight per plant unless I posted it.

Click to expand...

That's why I was asking for clarification on how you were defining things. 1 plant from 1 seed. Right? So you got an additional 1lbs PER plant difference when hilled vs nonhilled. That's significant, especially if you can get that number over the entire crop in a season.

Hilliing is simply to keep the new tubers covered to prevent them turning green indicating the production of solanine. It contributes nothing to production.

Click to expand...

Your results prove otherwise. When deep hilled you got an additional 1lbs per plant from the deep hilling compared to your nonhilled plants.

The new tubers are produced just above the seed potato and DO NOT GROW FROM PROTRUSIONS ALONG THE STEM.

Click to expand...

I am well aware of this, however did you find any evidence of roots along the stem above the potatoes?

Using the info you posted I'm trying to see what factors could have contributed to your 1lbs per plant difference when hilled vs nonhilled. That's why I'm asking for clarification on your terms and your results.

I used a 4x4 box for one of my towers and used old seed bags for several plants. I put 2 plants in each bag and started with the bag rolled down half way. as the plant got bigger I unrolled the bag and added mulch. I got more potatoes from the bags than I did from the box, and I was able to dump the dirt from the bag into the compost bin. I got about 6 lbs of potatoes from each bag and started the bags in the cellar in Jan. I used a regular light over the potatoes harvested in April and then started more bags in 1 month intervals. I also planted sweet potatoes in feed bags, the results were wonderful!!!
I didn't document things like Durgan but I was very pleased with my results!! last year was my first year for any type of potatoes

LVVCHAP said:

I have enjoyed reading of your experiences. I too have tried the potato towers without the success they were supposed to have. Then I read an article about raising potatoes under leaves. I have tweaked (I guess that is the right spelling) the original process to something that has been very successful for me. I do not have specific weights or good pics but I'll explain what I do. My beds are all 4 ft. wide so I made a cage to surround the potato bed that is 18" high and is 10 ft. long. Each bed has three rows about a foot apart and plants are about 1 foot between. I lay the seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with about 6" compost. As they begin to grow I continually put grass clippings and whatever around the plants to keep the tubers covered and moist. When they die off I cover them with about 12" of leaves and harvest them when I need them. The leaves keep them from freezing. These pics are not the greatest but hopefully will give you an idea of what I do. In the first pic the potato beds are on the left, the plants have already died off.

Click to expand...

Our methods are identical in the final analysis. I simply use different material to achieve the same results. Vegetation around potatoes can lead to scabbing and in some cases disease. My material is simply soil. Compost and wood chips. I keep the hilling to a minimum or simply enough to keep the new tubers covered. For watering, which is becoming more necessary over the last few years, I use the Magic Water Wand Method and stake mark the seed potato to get the moisture to the growing area. If there is sufficient rainwater in my four drums I water by pail.

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?GLPIR 14 July 2012 Magic Water Wand (Potato plants)
About 65 potato plants were watered in thirty minutes using The MAGIC WATER WAND. It is not prudent to jab any tool into the ground around potato plants, since the tubers might be speared.To overcome this difficulty, the seed potato position was marked with a stake at planting time. The WATER MAGIC WAND is pushed in the ground alongside the stake marker, and no damage should ensue. There is a severe drought in my area.

http://durgan.org/URL/?ARLGN 28 May 2009 Watering Plant Roots.The MAGIC WATER WAND.
This method gets water to the root area of the plants. The hydraulic effect of the water makes pushing the wand into the ground effortless. The device is made by cutting off the end of a typical water garden wand as sold in most hardware stores.

Jared77 said:

When defining potato production I simply use the figure produced from one plant of one seed. Defining production using seed weight versus acre production is absolutely nonsensical, since a seed can be any size or weight. People have no idea regarding potato production. There is almost nothing on the internet regarding weight per plant unless I posted it.

Click to expand...

That's why I was asking for clarification on how you were defining things. 1 plant from 1 seed. Right? So you got an additional 1lbs PER plant difference when hilled vs nonhilled. That's significant, especially if you can get that number over the entire crop in a season.

Hilliing is simply to keep the new tubers covered to prevent them turning green indicating the production of solanine. It contributes nothing to production.

Click to expand...

Your results prove otherwise. When deep hilled you got an additional 1lbs per plant from the deep hilling compared to your nonhilled plants.

The new tubers are produced just above the seed potato and DO NOT GROW FROM PROTRUSIONS ALONG THE STEM.

Click to expand...

I am well aware of this, however did you find any evidence of roots along the stem above the potatoes?

Using the info you posted I'm trying to see what factors could have contributed to your 1lbs per plant difference when hilled vs nonhilled. That's why I'm asking for clarification on your terms and your results.

Click to expand...

A one pound difference from a number of plants is a typical variation. That is why I posted the pictures of a dig. The quantity varies around an average a pound one way of the other for undefined reasons. Never have I seen any evidence of roots along the stem. All I have ever seen is new tubers around the seed potato and slightly above it maybe six inches at the most.

Jared - over the past 20 years I have tried several different methods of potato planting. Even though the trench and hilling method is more labor intensive I think it's the best. Last year I experimented with 20" round x 20" high wire cages and I filled them with chopped straw as the plants got taller up to a point about 10" or 12" above the seed. The plants were very healthy and bushy until mid August when they started to show their age. I removed the cages and dug through the straw down to the seed level in early October. I had a miserable harvest with only a few small potatoes in each cage. Back in my big garden I had two 50 ft. rows of beautiful potatoes that had been placed into 8" deep trenches and hilled about 3" or 4" above the original soil elevation. If my memory is correct I put 90 cut potato eyes in the ground for the 100 ft. of trench which means I planted them about 12" apart. My weighing is not exact but I wrote down 410 lb. on my clipboard hanging on the scale. So that is an average of 4.5 lb. per plant. Not too bad for me. But this year I'll only do one row.

I dug 2, 60' rows and a 30' row last year and come October I fell behind with everything else I had going and was struggling to get them out of the ground. That's why I was looking for something that was close in production but would be easier to harvest rather than digging up another 150' in the fall.

Between me working 24hr shifts, plus fall pee-wee soccer with my young daughter, and hunting seasons gearing up, and all the normal life stuff going on it was tough to find the time to commit to getting them. At that point most of the gardens done anyway so its a lower priority. I'm still on 24hr shifts but we're changed the schedule so maybe things will get better but its tough to say with our family welcoming another child this July I don't hold out much hope that things get much better. I wouldn't trade it for the world though. I'm not opposed to doing the work I'm just trying to work smarter not harder.

Then of course it doesn't help when I found this site last night before I posted this on here. http://www.henleypotatotower.co.uk/ and then you see they grew 55lbs of potatoes from 4 seed potatoes http://www.henleypotatotower.co.uk/images/Brochure/Brochure_23Dec11.pdf so I figured I'd ask on here if and how others were doing it.

55# from 4 spuds - WOW! I wonder how many eyes there were on each seed potato. Heck if I could do that well I'd only plant 8 spuds

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?BKWAI 11 September 2010 Yukon Gold Test Box Potatoes
Yukon Gold Potatoes were harvested today. A total weight of 23.5 pounds was harvested from the 4 by 4 foot test area. The quality is excellent. Another plant could probably be placed in the center of the area without crowding. The average weight per plant was 5.9 pounds. From my experience anything over 4 pounds is acceptable.

For reference.
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?XWWLI 19 May 2010. Test to determine quantity by weight of four Yukon Gold potatoes.
A box 4 by 4 feet by 11 inches high was made in ideal soil and location to determine the quantity of potatoes by weight that can be produced. Each plant has about a foot on each side to insure minimum crowding of the root system. The seed potato was planted just below ground level and covered with soil about two inches on top.
Soil was placed in the corners for the first hilling. After the first hilling the growing plant will be covered adequately with bedding wood chips until the end of the season.
This test is to establish by weight the quantity, and size quality of potatoes that can be grown in a small space.

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?CZJZE 26 June 2010 Yukon Gold Potato Growth in 4 by 4 foot Test Box
The potatoes were hilled once and heavily mulched. A string was tied around the vegetation to keep upright. The premise being that the more vegetation exposed to the sun feeds the new tubers. This opposed to deep hilling and hiding the vegetation.