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Grow More Potatoes per Square Foot by Using a Simple DIY Potato Tower

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Jonathon Engels, a long-time vegetarian turned vegan, is currently on a trip from Guatemala to... Read More

Many common staple crops require a lot of space to grow and pricey equipment to process, but potatoes are often considered one of the easy crops to cultivate. Even better, they don’t require any dehulling or grinding. Even better than that, they can be stored for months in something as simple as a cool, humid, dark place, such as a basement or garage in winter.

Potatoes are extremely versatile in the kitchen and are a cornerstone to many of our favorite dishes: hash browns, mashed potatoes, potato soup, French fries, roasted potatoes, baked potatoes, stuffed potatoes, croquettes, and tons of dishes from around the globe. In addition to being wildly popular in so many forms, potatoes are also stomach stuffers without bringing in a bunch of empty calories.

In terms of gardening, it’s possible to grow a significant amount of potatoes with very little square footage because they are well-suited for vertical gardening. However, most information about potato towers is slightly off and won’t produce the desired result of awesome harvests from small spaces. So, here are some thoughts on how to do it better.

What’s a Potato Tower?

There are several options for making a potato tower. Some people stack bottomless buckets. Some people make wooden towers. Some people stack tires. But, the simplest potato tower is probably taking a piece of wire fencing and rolling it into a cylinder, typically about three feet across and three feet high.

The bottom of the tower is prepared with fertile soil, compost, and straw. The potatoes are planted, and as the plant grows higher, more growing medium is added, ultimately creating a tower of potatoes.

The Idea Behind Potato Towers

Most of the videos and articles we see about potato towers are based on the idea of hilling potato plants. Traditionally, potatoes were planted in the soil, and after a few weeks, the potato plants were buried, leaving only a few leaves at the top. This is called hilling, and the branches of those young potato plants that were buried would become roots and, in turn, provide extra tubers.

The idea for potato towers as seen in most videos is that one can keep hilling, building up a bed (or tower) three or four feet tall. If the branches keep turning into roots and the roots into tubers, harvests will be huge. Unfortunately, this isn’t what happens. The potato plant will continue growing upwards, true, but for the most part, potatoes are only produced near the bottom.

Undoubtedly, this type of potato tower will produce potatoes. It’ll possibly produce more in number, but they tend to be small and misshapen. In terms of weight, the tower doesn’t produce more potatoes per square foot of garden space. It just makes taller plants and a good story.

A Different Take on Potato Towers

To take advantage of the vertical space that a garden tower produces, it would be better to plant more potatoes up the tower. The tower should be filled to the top from the beginning. Then, rather than adding soil as one layer of potato plants gets taller, the seed potatoes should be layered into the tower, about one layer for every foot tall.

The spacing within the planting layers is important as well. In the case of this tower, the idea is that the lower potatoes will grow out of the side of the cage (fence) tower, and the top layer will grow out of the top. Inside each layer, seed potatoes should be placed about 4 or five inches from the side of the tower, and they should be about a foot away from each other.

This tower will have potato vines covering the outside from top to bottom, with most of the plants popping out horizontally. Plus, there will be at least three times as many plants growing in the space because they aren’t just planted along the bottom. That equals more potatoes per square foot.

Final Tips for Your Potato Tower

The consensus from experienced tower growers is that potatoes seem to be small, the towers need regular watering, and—in general—late frosts can run a crop that’s planted too early.

So, it might be a good idea to grow smaller potatoes in the first place. Rather than hoping for that extra-large baking potato, go for the Yukon Golds and Purple Majesties of the world. Leave extra space if you want to try large potatoes.
Because potatoes are sun-loving and thirsty plants, it makes sense to put them somewhere with plenty of sun and easy access to water. It’ll make giving them a drink more tolerable as the season goes on.
For those who plant potatoes before the last frost, be prepared to protect those young plants somehow if a late frost comes in. For those with longer growing seasons, wait a bit longer to plant those potatoes. Smaller potatoes only need three months or so to mature. Larger potatoes can take up to four months.

A potato tower can be a lot of fun to experiment with, and some people have real success with it. Successful growers should expect about two pounds of potatoes per plant, so grow as many towers as makes sense.

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