You Say Potato and I Say.....

I say the same damn thing actually. Even with an Australian accent we both pronounce the word EXACTLY the same - I could excuse it if it was patata and it was being sung to a Spaniard - but it's not. That song is so retarded.

Anyways - Spuds.  The most prolific of tubers - the staple that drove history. From it's humble roots in Peru 10,000 years ago to our plates today. Enabling the colonization of Europe and driving Ireland from famine to feast....and back to famine again. There are as more varieties than there are womens shoes.... And yet 90% of us grab a bag of russets from the supermarket and call it a day.  MAYBE if you're lucky some reds or yukon golds.  It's shameful.
This is going to be a long post covering several methods and variations on growing them - a product review - and even a rather paltry handful of the real deal.  New potatoes... that delicacy that growing your own gives you access to.

Firstly - why russets? They're not the best spud, most tasty, nor the easiest to grow. In fact in Peru traditional farmers have a variety of potato for every climate, elevation, soil type, and variety of sun/shade. Yet here in the US, if you're at a supermarket you get maybe 3 varieties if you're lucky.  The answer is McDonalds.  Well I shouldn't point directly at them, it's fast food in general, but since they have their 'iconic fries' (which for the record I think have as much taste as cardboard) they can be the focus.  It's all about economy and uniformity.  Research (yes they actually did a study) shows that you can get the most number of fries from a russet potato, and they want a uniform experience across their franchise. I kid you not.  McDonalds alone holds a massive share of the potato market - so with 90% of the US's growers growing russet burbank's - that's what you get.

So let's grow our own!  It's actually not the hardest of plant to grow, though it has a few needs that should be looked after and a few considerations.  A fertile loamy soil is preferred, if you have too much time on your hands a PH level of around 6.5 is preferred. In the useless fact department, that's about the PH of your morning pee.  For the record I'm NOT saying pee in your spuds.. it's a useless fact that has nothing to do with the garden.  You want to keep the soil damp with deep watering to get all the roots - but not wet - as that promotes rot.

You'll want to buy seed potatoes - no big deal and easy to get at Lowes or Walmart, or for more exotics, I'd look online... ironically I'm doing my tests and experiments with russets (yes - after my huge screed at the beginning, that's what I'm using... next year I won't be.)

There are as many ways to grow potatoes as there are potatoes (ok, not really - but there's a LOT) - I'm going to be dealing with a variation on one of those methods as a way to satisfy the needs of my particular garden.

Image from 'the modern victory garden' - an excellent blog.

The most common method is the ditch or trench method. You dig a trench around 12 inches deep (or deeper), put down your seeder potatoes and just cover them over with 3 inches of soil. As the potatoes sprout and grow, you put dirt up around the stem. the submerged stem turns to root and puts out more spuds.  Contrary to what you might first think, potatoes don't grow 'down' but put out buds and new potatoes between the seed and the above ground stem. You continue covering the growing stem till your trench is full (or even a heaped hill) - the key is to promote the growth of the spuds while keeping them covered - this is IMPORTANT. Non covered they'll turn green and are poisonous.

In the most common of grow-harvest situations they'll flower, then the plants will die off, then you harvest your potatoes and clean, cook, store as you see fit.  When I get around to storing them, you'll have my opinions on methods - till then it's out of the scope of this post.

So we want the most we can get, in the smallest amount of space - and if you're me... the least amount of work. Not because I'm lazy, but because if I have to spend a week away from the garden at harvest time, or get bogged down in housework, repair and renovation projects, and the kids - I can't afford a 'hands on' approach.

The first place I looked was Square Foot Gardening and it's associated forums. Here we're told to build an extra frame to add to the height of the square - then pile on soil (as a SFG bed is only 6 inches deep and we need twice that at least.).
So building a special 1 foot frame per square I want to grow in isn't THAT much of a pain in the arse, but it's work and materials I'll have to source.  Add to this that I know something from personal experience that they might not have hit upon. My mothers garden - the one that inspired me so in the beginning, showed me how rampant they can grow unchecked. My mother had them grow everywhere in the garden. She only ever planted once but was pulling them out for 2 years from all corners of her single monolithic garden bed.  I'm putting them with strawberries and mint - things I'll never plant in a communal bed, but only in a dedicated - separate area or container.
Sorry SFG... not going to happen.

So a variation is 'the tower'. Here take we the covering of the growing stem and we leverage it using vertical space to maximize the yield.  I ran across an article on this originally with a retired potato farmer, who reported growing up to 50 - 100lbs of potatoes on his condo balcony.
'Sounds legit' as we internet smartarses like to say (with our tongue firmly in our cheek).  This method I did try personally in garden #2, and the idea works - but isn't without hidden pitfalls.  But first - the method:
A 2ft by 2ft frame is constructed out of 6inch wide lumber (I used 2x6's) and corner posts are put in reaching up to 4ft.  You plant your seeders in the box and cover with 3 inches of soil, then as they sprout you cover them. When you reach the top of the box, you screw on a new set of planks and fill some more.. rinse and repeat till it the tower is complete.  The plants then grow, flower, and you can...in theory... unscrew boards and rob new potatoes from within the tower without harvesting, or leave it till the plants die and you harvest the lot.
I did this myself, but had to move house before getting a harvest in. I had to dig out and dismantle the box.  I did indeed have roots that went up 4ft and lots and lots of buds that would have grown into potatoes (including a few fully formed new potatoes).  So it DOES work.....
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...HOWEVER... here are the negative points.

• Empirical evidence of people not getting that high yield. Probably user error, but with more reports of a low yield than the estimated 50-100lbs, it tells me this is needs a bit more babysitting than people are letting on. The checking of plants and topping up is work enough - I need a more hands off approach.
• Not all potato varieties will grow that tall and sprout potatoes all the way up. People growing Yukon Golds, for instance, reported very low yields only in the bottom of the tower - the rest was empty.
• The sheer amount of soil. 2 x 2 x 4  is more dirt than you think it is.  Unless my math fails me, that's 16 cubic feet of dirt. My square foot gardens at 6 inches high are 8 cubic feet. So I could fill 2 complete new garden beds with this soil.... which leads us too.....
• Old School Farmers advice not to grow them repeatedly in the same soil - untested and unverified, but I take advice from the senior generation seriously. Disposing of this dirt, even if it's into my garden beds for a couple of harvests, means I need 2 garden beds to swap soil in and out of to effectively rotate the soil. That means all plants emptied at the same time - dug out - swapped - refilled and planted. This is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve: constant planting and rotation within the squares of each bed.
• Cost to gain. getting THAT much dirt and compost as well as the materials for the tower, even with my frugal sensibilities, adds up. You not only need a maximum gain, but be able to reuse it several seasons to get a 'pay back' in savings.
• Deep watering. Potatoes need deep watering - you need to ensure a method to get that water all the way down into the tower when constructing it - although I managed with a long - slow water - it's not mentioned in a lot of how-to's and articles and could lead to a small yeild.

So - if you're game to try, go ahead. This method DOES work and I wouldn't dismiss it entirely if it suits your situation. My cons are strictly for the BMG.  So we must look further.

During my Mothers visit to the US earlier this year we were discussing her prolific potatoes in her 70's garden (yes I'm THAT old), my current gardening methods, and her own situation and returning to her gardening.  While on a shopping trip at WalMart we found the grow bags she'd had limited success with, but also the TaterPot (I'm including the manufacturers link as they also deal with online seed potatoes... see how good I am to you guys?).  It's a nested pot that allows you to grow using the methods I've detailed above, it includes everything you need including sphagnum moss as it's growing medium and 3 seeder potatoes of different varieties.  It cost us 12 bucks at WalMart - or 14 bucks on their website (I must have hit a special).  If you wanted to get one thing and grow potatoes - it will do the trick.

 Here's mine. Growing away a bit over 2 months.
The only things I've added to their instructions is to dust over the leaves with some worm tea, as I do for all my plants, once a week for pest control. As far as watering goes it gets the same as all the other plants. Some worm tea in water, and the addition of extra water to ensure it's always damp.

Here you can see, as advertised , new potatoes in the accessible inner pot.  I'd feel comfortable telling people wanting to buy it works, exactly as they say.
So - a solution to my spud growing?  Not yet, although I felt comfortable spending money to test it out - There's still the price. $12.  If you're a casual gardener doing this for a hobby, it's no big deal.  If you're doing things similar to me, as a garden that pays its own way, you have to break it down into how much it produces. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get $12 of potatoes out of it in one harvest, so it's going to come down to how reusable the system is, and how easily it is to reproduce the results replenishing the medium or substituting it.

After we bought this, for shits n giggles I rummaged around the workshop for some supplies I knew I had, and an idea I wanted to try.  You've probably seen this off to one side in a few of the garden pictures, I present my 'ghetto fabulous' alternative:

It's a plastic milk crate organizer, lined with landscaping fabric. I planted 3 seeder potatoes on  3 inches of my own 'potato mix' soil and covered it over with another 3 inches.
I set it up so I planted them literally one after the other to set up in a head to head test.  They've had the same watering, the same treatment over the same period of time. I went today to check the harvestability of them and see where I stood after 2 and a half months.
This test isn't 100% scientific as I moved the milk crate over to the squashes. They get roughly the same amount of sun, but I should have put them side by side.  The milk crate has 3 seeder russet potatoes in it - the tater pot has a yukon gold, a russet, and a red.

First - although the milk crate cost me nothing as I had all the materials on hand, I could break down the costs roughly.

• The seeder potatoes (of which I have many left over) were two dollars.  The crate was on special when I bought it for two dollars fifty (although there are dubious means of acquiring ACTUAL milk crates - as we all did as bachelors or students.. I'm not endorsing them on the site... but if it's free, it's me).
•   Landscaping cloth I pick up for 3 dollars a roll, but I always have some on hand - as should anyone gardening or landscaping.. I'm not adding that in.
•   The potato mix was 1/2 cow compost (2 dollars a bag - I used under a quarter bag, lets call it 50c) and 1/2 coconut coir (3/4 an expanded block - at 1.50 a block - lets call it 1.50).
• And several handfuls of fresh worm castings (free).

  I *may* have put in a handful of perlite, but I can't remember and I couldn't see it in the mix.

So a total of  $7.50, provided you have the materials on hand,  If you had to buy the cloth, the compost and the coir.... $13.50... a dollar fifty more than the tater pot.

Now side by side the TaterPot seems to have more green happening, but the proof is what's under the ground.

 The milk crate - the soil was made to be loose and non-compacting. Using a method we call 'bandicooting', the soil is moistened and you slowly put your hand through the soil and pluck out the potatoes while trying not to upset the roots too much.  We'll have to see how this went over the next few days - but these were the easily grabbable spuds.  The near lack of skin was pretty cool... these won't have to be peeled.
I also saw a LOT of buds that hadn't grown out yet - leaving me with little doubt that left alone till a full harvest, from start to finish, I feel very secure in saying I'd have a milk crate teeming with spuds.

The prize catch was this monster. Remember I'm a rather big guy, my hand measures 8 1/2 inches from the tip of my middle finger to the base of my palm.
And you know what they say about big hands...... that's right... big gloves.

 The setup of the TaterPot really only allows stealing from the edges of the inner pot that are exposed - I didn't want to dig into the soil too much to disturb other potatoes, as what you scratch will probably rot. This was evident when a pecan fell out the side that a squirrel had buried and alongside it was a rotten russet potato of a half decent size - not comparable to the one above, but it would have put them on a more equal ground.

Together we can see the results. That monster spud tips the scale. But remember this isn't a 100% objective test. There are probably still spuds in the center of the TaterPot.  The one I lost might have put them neck and neck - but then again this is a test for how many I could get RIGHT NOW, so I have to give it to the milk crate.
Now these results are not final. Plant recovery WILL be taken into account, and if my russets don't bounce back from my manhandling - it will be a decisive victory to the TaterPot (due to ease of early harvesting).  I look forward to starting them both again and seeing the reusability of the TaterPot as well as it's usability with other mediums.
If I had to set up again tomorrow, I'd use the milk crate - but that's mainly because I can do that without purchasing anything - if I had no materials I wouldn't be adverse to buying 2 TaterPots.

Now a garden is only of use to anyone if you find a use for what you grow... And if you don't use fresh produce while it's fresh.... then what's the point?  Had I a few more I would have done mashed spuds - as there's really nothing greater to showcase how delicious a new potato can be. But wish in one hand and shit in the other - see which fills first.  What did we do?

tell me that doesn't look good!

A pot roast - with the exception of a single onion and the meat - it all came fresh from the garden.  I still have some peas and some beans left in the fridge for tomorrow.

....now all I have to do is get that to happen the other 6 days of the week.....