Easy DIY potato towers are easy to make and have many advantages!
We have successfully grown potatoes in Easy DIY potato towers for a few years now. The video shows you how to layer the spuds in straw and soil in an easily constructed wire tube.
It’s also our Tuesday in the Garden Blog Hop! Please Check out all the blogs linked at the bottom of this post for DIY Garden projects you will love!
WHY WIRE POTATO TOWERS?
Growing potatoes is easy. For decades Dave planted potatoes in hills in our heavy clay garden. Potatoes grew ok in those hills; even in our horrible heavy clay soil.
BUT! There is a real downside to growing potatoes in the garden, unbound, so to speak. We can never harvest them all. No matter how hard we look a couple of potatoes, some years a LOT of potatoes are left in the garden.
The following spring, we had potato starts volunteering all over the place. When they started coming up in the raised beds, Dave decided to corral them in towers.
Wire Potato Towers are easy to make, and easy to harvest! They are fantastic garden space savers! This is a sure fire way to bring in a potato harvest even if all you have for space is a sunny patio or flower bed! And most important of all; the potatoes are healthier!
We had no potato Scab the few years we’ve grown potatoes in wire towers. That’s why we are growing them this way again. So easy to move the towers each year to rotate the garden crops too.
Harvest by digging your hands into the straw, pushing over the wire tower or lifting it up. All the spuds will be harvested. No strays.
LET’S GROW SOME SPUDS:
First things first! Go find the potatoes you want to grow and wire tower materials. Our favorite potatoes to grow are red potatoes. This year Dave planted purple potatoes in one straw tower. Purple potatoes are more nutritious due to their deep purple color. We love growing them too! Purple potatoes have a nummy buttery flavor. They are delicious in Purple Potato Chorizo Burrito recipe.
RULE OF THUMB! The darker the flesh and leaves of your veg the better they are for your health! Full of antioxidants! Here’s more on the nutritional value of the Purple Majesty Potato.
He bought our seed potatoes from the feed store. Your local food co-op may have some for sale, or the farmers market near you. He prepared the potatoes a full day before he built the towers and planted the spuds.
Prepping the Potatoes for planting:
Dave cut the larger potato into sections, each section had an ‘eye’. Which is the little tough sprout that will make a root. He set the cut potatoes on a paper towel to ‘heal up’ (dry the cut ends) for 24 hours. This is to avoid the cut potatoes rotting in the ground.
Really small potatoes, like the purple ones he bought, do not require cutting. The whole potato will nourish all the potato roots.
The potatoes are ready to plant. Time to make them a home!
Notice behind Dave’s potato Tower is a row of blue half 55 gallon barrels. They are also planted in potatoes. Planting in Easy DIY potato barrels is another excellent space saving option for Potatoes.
Here’s a Video demonstration of How Dave made and planted our Potato Towers.
Easy DIY Potato Towers:
MATERIALS NEEDED:
- Approximately five foot length of four-foot high fencing wire. Any hole size will work.
- Tools to bend and crimp wire. And extra wire or strong twine.
- A fence post or other stable structure to wire the potato tower too
- approximately one bale of straw
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE EASY DIY POTATO TOWER -WIRE TOWER METHOD:
- Dave used fencing wire he had lying around with 4 inch squares to form his towers. (His wire was old and beat up. Perfect for potato towers. Use what you have!)
- Create a circle of the fencing wire about 4 feet tall and 2 feet in diameter. Wire the ends together to secure the circle.
- Push straw against the outside wire a couple of inches thick and leave the middle hollow.
- Next Layer straw on the ground a few inches thick.
- Layer on about 6 inches of good growing dirt. (see Dave’s soil mix above)
- Bury the cut potato sections in the soil.
- Water the soil, but do NOT saturate it!
- Layer 6 inches of straw over the planted soil.
- Repeat this all the way up the tower.
- Be sure the top of the tower is layered with straw! You want the potatoes protected from sunlight or they will go green.
- Secure your potato towers! They will fall over in strong winds or unlevel ground. Dave wired his towers to a fence post.
Occasionally; thoroughly water your towers. Make sure to stick the nozzle through the sides so the bottom layers get water too! Adjust watering for your rainfall! And be careful! The potatoes in one of Dave’s wire potato towers rotted. He had to replant that tower!
As the summer goes along the potatoes tops will start to emerge through the sides of the towers. That’s great! That means you have potatoes growing in the bottoms layers. Eventually lots of green potato leaves will be emerging all around your tower.
The potato tops will start to die when the potatoes are ready for harvest. You can harvest a layer at a time from the top down. Or, if all the potatoes come ripe at once, pull the frame off and sift the dirt and straw for you spuds! 🙂
Easy DIY potato towers make a gardener’s life simpler. We like it like that!
OUR OTHER BLOG CONTRIBUTORS HAVE DIY PROJECT FOR YOU TOO! Don’t forget to stop by all the blogs in this blog hop to see what we all have been up too! Happy Gardening!
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Heidi L Crosby
Wednesday 14th of April 2021
What do you do with the straw and dirt after harvest? Can you use it again or till it into the ground?
Diane
Wednesday 14th of April 2021
Hi Heidi, Great question. The straw and dirt make great compost or mulch. IF you did not experience any problems with your crop.
Flea beetles, other pests and mildews can hold over in those materials from one growing season to the next. So I would NOT reuse them in another potato tower unless you are sure they don't harbor problems for you.
We take the wire towers apart and use the straw as mulch. If we have pests or mildew we compost it in our Woody branch compost far away from our garden compost. Hope this helps!
We start over with new towers and fresh straw and dirt every growing season. Dave mostly uses his potato barrels to grow spuds these days. They are easy to work with and last forever. For best results you should also change out the soil in them to avoid replanting in infested soil. Happy Gardening.
Overton Hallford
Tuesday 13th of June 2017
I saw someone do this with used tires. Every time he got some good leaf growth at the top, he added another tire and some more filler. All he needed to do to harvest was to push the stack of tires over. I thought that it was a great way to repurpose a bunch of old tires.
Diane
Tuesday 13th of June 2017
Hi Overton, That is a great way to repurpose old tires! We use old tires to plant too. But we have never tried to make them a potato tower. Thanks for sharing this inspiration!
Michele
Friday 21st of April 2017
Wow. I thought I wouldn't try potatoes this year after two unsuccessful years. But your post has me excited. I love the idea of getting them all planted at once plus no adding soil as the plants grow.....they're fully staked! Thanks for the inspiration.
Diane
Friday 21st of April 2017
Hi Michelle, I do hope you give this method of growing spuds a try. We have had very good luck with it. Please let us know if you have questions. And we would love to know how your towers grow for you! Happy Gardening :)
Jami
Wednesday 18th of May 2016
Potato towers are on my to-do list one day, I've always just grown them in a plot because I had the space. But I gave up because of voles - I think I need to modify using the garbage can method to thwart them. :)
Diane
Wednesday 18th of May 2016
Hi Jami, Good luck with your voles. We have moles here. They can destruct a potato hill in no time! So far they are leaving the towers alone. Fingers crossed!
Shelly
Tuesday 17th of May 2016
I've grown potatoes in the garden before with good luck but every year when I would go to harvest them I will miss a few and have potatoes springing up around other plants the following year. This looks like a great way to grow potatoes and harvest them too. We'll have to give it a try.
Diane
Wednesday 18th of May 2016
Thanks for stopping by Shelly! Growing potatoes in towers has worked pretty well for us!