Potato Tower

I've been reading quite a bit about potato towers on the web lately so I decided to give it a try. I started  out with the tomato cage I showed you the other day. We had a big round bale of grass and corn stalks left over from the calves. Grampa Tom told me I could use it for gardens. The instructions call for straw, but I think this will do.

I used the compost I had in this garbage can. I put kitchen scraps, yard waste and some chicken poop in it last year. Made some awesome compost!

I put down a layer of grass hay and then a layer of compost and then placed my potatoes in it.

Here's the second layer.

There's 6 layers here, but I had to quit because I ran out of potatoes and had to get some more.

Here's the final tower. I managed get 11 layers. There's 63 potential potato plants in there. A little less than 9 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes. It will be interesting to see how many pounds of potatoes we will get out of it. 

I plan to plant another one full of Pontiac Reds, but I'm going to wait until next week. It was 75 degrees here when I was planting these, but it's supposed to drop down into the lower 30s this weekend.  We will probably get more potatoes out of that tower than this one. Pontiac Reds are just better producers. 

 The big drawback I see to this method is that it will take a lot of water. I want to build a keyhole garden this year too. I was reading about how some people were making keyhole gardens like the hugelkultur mounds with wood underneath compost and dirt. I really like the idea of raised beds that drain well, but don't need a lot of water.

I'll keep you posted!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

I used to have one of these. Worked great, but it was ancient when I got it and it fell apart. I've thought about getting another one, but with my little bitty kitchen and it just being Grampa Tom and I now, it just seems like to much.