This was the best test I've seen so far on RUclips. Most people don't specify they are growing an indeterminate variety in their tower. Thanks! I look forward to seeing if you come up with something else to make it even better. 😊
Wow! Thank you for doing the experiment! Good to know! Last year I grew potatoes (red and few white ) in large bins, and few directly in the ground. The ones in the ground did very well while those in bins, not so (good soil, watering, full sun etc. Bushy growth, small, and few potatoes). I won't grow them in containers again.
Good video, I am actually trying an experiment with a variation of the method you described at the end of your video. I'm surprised you got any potatoes above the bottom bucket.
It is possible that the yield was reduced because the total access to nutrients via volume of soil is lower when in a contained space. I'm curious if anyone knows how far deep and wide that Roots will spread when potatoes are grown in soil good for potatoes but in a traditional Garden row or bed. If potatoes have any kind of fungal relationship with their roots, then potatoes in a traditional garden bed might be able to draw nutrients from much further away than the plant via the way that symbiotic fungus can bring nutrients to the plant. I'm not sure if this happens with certain garden plants but it certainly happens all over the place in a natural ecosystem
My mother has done this method however she (and many others) use straw beyond the first layer. The plant draws its nutrients from the soil at the bottom and the straw allows room for potatoes to grow. Additionally, if you want a bit more diameter to work with, I have seen them made with a cylinder of wire mesh/ chicken wire.
Great idea. You’re right, the nutrients would all come from the first layer. And I definitely needed a larger circumference. Lots to think about for next year.
@@shortseasongarden I think as long as they are thoroughly covered after each few inches of growth then fundamentally it should work fine. Best of luck and I hope you grow a ton of spuds 👍
My best ever yield from a single potato plant was purely accidental. A potato peeling thrown out in the garden was covered by a steel 200 litre drum, which I filled with water. The peeling sprouted and grew out from under all sides of this drum, all summer. It turned out to be a Pink Eye, an old Tasmanian variety. When the plant eventually died back, just for interest's sake, not expecting any result at all from this plant which had been crushed by 200 kg of cold water for several months, I emptied the drum and removed it. I harvested 7 kg (15.5 lbs) of good potatoes from that single plant, beneath the drum.
I tried potatoes in plastic buckets and they tasted like plastic. Nice job and a lot of work but I think taters grow best when they are in dirt with wood raised beds. I have great results with those.
Thats great experiment. I planted our tomatoes in grow bags this year but they were not as productive as when I had them on the ground last year. Maybe we can try towering them next year. We just dont have the space to grow them on the ground again.
I did a similar thing with a potato that self-seeded this year, am awaiting the results, but this is potentially a good use of space in a garden with limitations of it.
I appreciate the experiment although I did notice something that may have had a negative effect on the quality and quantity of the container potatoes. I noticed at least one lable that indicated that the bucket contained toxins, acids or poisons in the past and is not food grade. I'm not saying that it was the problem. I don't really know, although it is one potential culprit that you may want to investigate. Have a great day!
Because winter and frost start later and later in the year, I planted "Christmas potatoes" a month ago in seven 35 liter grow buckets (bottom diameter 32 cm, top 40 cm, height 37 cm). I didn't use seed potatoes, they are not on sale at this time, but I let some small supermarket potatoes from 5 different varieties germinate just a little bit. Most commercial potatoes are determinate, so I usually planted them at 2 different heights, 2 or 3 on each level. Lots of grow difference between these varieties:: One has not shown any stem and foliage yet, another just started appearing a few days ago, and the other five buckets show great growth, I have hilled them once already, so one last hilling in 10-15 days and they'll be good to go and good to grow until Christmas harvest! My 7 buckets contain Agatha, Agria, Île de Batz, Lacrima Cristi and Nectar varieties. I have 9 more buckets coming this week, with Allians, Annabelle, Chérie (nutty flavor), Colomba and Jazzy varieties. This time, I wont plant all 2 levels at the same time, just the bottom level, and add the second level after the leaves of the first one start showing up. My substrate is 2 thirds of free municipal compost and one third of heavy garden soil, as I didn't have any money for a fancy optimized substrate. It works wonders for leaves so far, I'll see what it does for the leaves in 2 months. This soil high in compost does not seem to work well for anything else though, like beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, spinach, or leek. These will need much less compost and a bit more light lime sand. Plus, it drinks a lot of water... If this kind of autumn growing goes well, I'll have my own seed potatoes for spring, without needing a long storage period, so I'll probably try again next year, by and by selecting the tastiest varieties that work well in these conditions. I thought about towers too, and the best results seem to come from cylinders of chicken wire with a larger diameter than your pails. And you could also grow, say strawberries vertically in the same cylinder. But your experience makes me wonder if it would not be better to make 3 or 4 little incisions on the stem right above the leaves on the main stem, and maybe even cut these leaves, each time you hill them. This could force the growth of new potato-bearing roots at each of these cuts. I'll actually try this on my winter potatoes, one bucket with cuts, one without, of the same variety. Rather than cylindrical towers, I might rather try rectangular ones, say 40x80 cm for a first try. You build 30 cm high coffers with a steel armature and chicken wire on all 4 sides and the bottom. You put the seed potatoes in the first coffer on the ground, filled with soil, plus an empty coffer on top, so that the potato stems can grow through the chicken wire holes. Then you hill that second level and put another empty coffer on top. You can probably pile up 4 coffers this way for a vigorous variety. I had also thought about harvesting early potatoes first, that's why rectangular towers seemed easier to design with this constraint, as you just need to make the front side of chicken wire partially removable (for instance, hinged alongside the bottom),. Then you can just tip over this front side, harvest the early potatoes and dig out the soil without the above sections crashing down on you because of the chicken wire and the steel armature supporting the coffers, put new soil in the bottom coffer and grow some more stuff there. It's not clear however if this would effect the growth of the rest of the plant in the upper sections, but it should work fine with determinate varieties, as you lay seed potatoes (i.e. different plants) in each section, unlike one seed potato of an indeterminate variety in the bottom section only. €4.04 35l buckets: tarpin-chavet.fr/bacs/76-bac-de-jardin-30-35-litres.html#/49-contenance-35_litres (in France) They seem to be the right size and volume for single height buckets.
@@shortseasongarden Well I have a tiny garden, so it's easy to get crazy ideas for space efficient growing devices. Still, it's just potatoes, the cheapest vegetable there is, so we must grow it cheaply too, even more expensive early and specialty potatoes. I didn't grow much potatoes before, but I figured I could grow some in containers on the terrace, since the veggie garden is cramped.
The objective with having new seed potatoes in each layer is to increase the yield per area of garden. If you did 3 layers then you’re effectively growing 3 times the area in that space.
the result did not suprise me for two reasons firstly the amount of nutrients that where available went towards producing more and more stem secondly its much more difficult to keep it in the right temp and humidity in a container like this because its much more exposed to the heat and sun and the traped heat could not decipate furthermore the weird shape of the potatoes can be atributed the unstable humidity and temperature levels (yes compaction is an issue too). its a nice experiment though great job!
We are trying the same experiment but with a wire cage, first dirt then straw and repeat on up as they grow! You mentioned the energy the plant puts into growing taller/ reduced production of potatoes makes sense (unfortunately) all we can do is wait and see how it turns out! Have you tried the same thing again with a new approach?
@@averteddisasterbarely2339 Well, I do it as they do it at commercial scale. Dig a bit in the ground, place potato and build a pyramid shape with soil over the potato. You do this as continuous rows, one after another. It's easy to collect the potatoes, because I don't have to dig, just push the soil to reveal the potato. When it rains, the rows keep the water in between each row and get absorbed. One thing I could different is to use 80% compost mixed with straws, something rich in nutrient, but soft and holding the moisture. The potatoes need sun and water. That's all.
@@DarkGT thanks for your response! Because this is our first time at growing potatoes, I've just learned that the potatoes you use make all the difference as to yield....determinate /Indeterminate, the first only grow at one level, the second grow at many levels ! Have you tried both? Sometimes I find the people who watch these videos have more knowledge than the people making them !
@@averteddisasterbarely2339 I'm sure you are the expert here :) I know there are many tips and trick to grow potatoes, but at the end of the day it's just potato. Plant it in sunny spot, water - that's all most of the time. Me and my father grow potatoes we plant from maybe 15+ years and don't even know what is the varieties of the potato plants. One is normal yellow, good for baking, frying. The other is red elongated and it is good for mashing. They grow as bush, determinated or whatever, could be like some nightshade plants, can't say. Some people will tell you to remove some of the tubes, so less but large potato will grow, but you will lose on volume of the production. Some will advice on mixture of fertilizer - chemical - nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus , iron, calcium etc. But is a fertile soil you don't need much. One organic way, nobody else on home gardening will told you is to use the compost as tea for bacteria fertilizer. You place some alive compost in water for 2 hours and you hope the right bacteria in there multiple. After that you use the water to water you plants. The microorganisms are know to benefit the plants, like creating colony inside the root system and helping with nutrient absorption. Also wood chips as top layer, the fungus also can have this property. Other popular channel you can seek info from are : Self Sufficient Me and Epic Gardening. The first one uses raised beds and have huge success rate.
So if I didn't miss something you used 4 seed potatoes for the towers and a bunch more for in the ground. If this is true than the towers are a lot more efficient with the seed potatoes than the ground is.
So yes and no. I started with 5 pounds of seed potatoes. I planted 4 potatoes in pails and the remainder in the ground. So yes, I had more potatoes in the ground than in the pails. Throughout the late summer I harvested some potatoes from the ground as “new potatoes”. At the end of the season, I attempted to mark off 4 of the remaining plants in the ground for my comparison. Admittedly it is hard to tell where the tubers from one plant end and where the next one starts, especially after the potato plants themselves have died. So no, as best I could measure, I did not get more potatoes from the towers than from 4 plants in the ground. I did get nearly as many though, so from the point of view of someone with space constraints, the towers could be an advantage. Hopefully this reply clears up the confusion rather than adding to it 😀
Potatoes absolutely are categorised as determinate vs indeterminate. In England, they call them "early" or "late" but it's the same thing. Last summer, my determinate potato varieties generally produced exactly 8 mid sized spuds each before dying off. Whereas my indeterminate varieties continued producing scores, absolute bunches of potatoes, long after they had already produced an abundant crop of large potatoes. If I had left them to continue growing, and kept milling them up, they would have yielded about 60 to 80 good sized potatoes each. These potatoes did indeed grow all along the stem, everywhere that they flopped onto the ground. This variety was "Up To Dates", an old Scottish spud bred in 1896.
@@rubygray7749 mmmm never heard of the terms applied to potatoes. You can get some large potatoes from 'first earlies' if left to grow for longer. 'Maincrop' potatoes are generally planted later and left longer to obtain medium to large potatoes better for storage. But, it's down to the weather and soil as to what crop you eventually get. In the north of England we don't go in for fancy ways, maybe where you are it's completely different.
This was the best test I've seen so far on RUclips. Most people don't specify they are growing an indeterminate variety in their tower.
Thanks! I look forward to seeing if you come up with something else to make it even better. 😊
Thank you for this video.I was waiting for the result ✌️
You're welcome 😊
Wow! Thank you for doing the experiment! Good to know!
Last year I grew potatoes (red and few white ) in large bins, and few directly in the ground. The ones in the ground did very well while those in bins, not so (good soil, watering, full sun etc. Bushy growth, small, and few potatoes). I won't grow them in containers again.
Was waiting for this one, Thanks
That was cool. Glad i got to see the outcome from when I watched the setting up of the towers.
This is amazing!!!!
This is amazing. All others youtube videos of potato towers are only start and end, nothing more. But here is showed everything
Glad you enjoyed it. It was a fun experiment 😀
Thank you for this video, I was anxiously awaiting the results
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I certainly had fun with it.
Cool!!!
Good video, I am actually trying an experiment with a variation of the method you described at the end of your video. I'm surprised you got any potatoes above the bottom bucket.
It is possible that the yield was reduced because the total access to nutrients via volume of soil is lower when in a contained space. I'm curious if anyone knows how far deep and wide that Roots will spread when potatoes are grown in soil good for potatoes but in a traditional Garden row or bed. If potatoes have any kind of fungal relationship with their roots, then potatoes in a traditional garden bed might be able to draw nutrients from much further away than the plant via the way that symbiotic fungus can bring nutrients to the plant. I'm not sure if this happens with certain garden plants but it certainly happens all over the place in a natural ecosystem
My mother has done this method however she (and many others) use straw beyond the first layer. The plant draws its nutrients from the soil at the bottom and the straw allows room for potatoes to grow.
Additionally, if you want a bit more diameter to work with, I have seen them made with a cylinder of wire mesh/ chicken wire.
Great idea. You’re right, the nutrients would all come from the first layer. And I definitely needed a larger circumference. Lots to think about for next year.
@@shortseasongarden I think as long as they are thoroughly covered after each few inches of growth then fundamentally it should work fine. Best of luck and I hope you grow a ton of spuds 👍
My best ever yield from a single potato plant was purely accidental.
A potato peeling thrown out in the garden was covered by a steel 200 litre drum, which I filled with water.
The peeling sprouted and grew out from under all sides of this drum, all summer. It turned out to be a Pink Eye, an old Tasmanian variety.
When the plant eventually died back, just for interest's sake, not expecting any result at all from this plant which had been crushed by 200 kg of cold water for several months, I emptied the drum and removed it.
I harvested 7 kg (15.5 lbs) of good potatoes from that single plant, beneath the drum.
WOW! That’s quite a yield from one plant! Thank you for sharing that story.
Great Video!
Not😊
I tried potatoes in plastic buckets and they tasted like plastic. Nice job and a lot of work but I think taters grow best when they are in dirt with wood raised beds. I have great results with those.
Thats great experiment. I planted our tomatoes in grow bags this year but they were not as productive as when I had them on the ground last year. Maybe we can try towering them next year. We just dont have the space to grow them on the ground again.
It’s certainly worth a try. I have lots of space here but enjoy experimenting.
I did a similar thing with a potato that self-seeded this year, am awaiting the results, but this is potentially a good use of space in a garden with limitations of it.
Yes for sure. Potato towers are a definite benefit if you’re tight on space. In my case, I have lots of room. Just wanted to experiment.
I appreciate the experiment although I did notice something that may have had a negative effect on the quality and quantity of the container potatoes. I noticed at least one lable that indicated that the bucket contained toxins, acids or poisons in the past and is not food grade. I'm not saying that it was the problem. I don't really know, although it is one potential culprit that you may want to investigate. Have a great day!
The guy hasn't a clue
@@russell4824 It's how you learn. Start from zero and work your way up.
Because winter and frost start later and later in the year, I planted "Christmas potatoes" a month ago in seven 35 liter grow buckets (bottom diameter 32 cm, top 40 cm, height 37 cm). I didn't use seed potatoes, they are not on sale at this time, but I let some small supermarket potatoes from 5 different varieties germinate just a little bit. Most commercial potatoes are determinate, so I usually planted them at 2 different heights, 2 or 3 on each level. Lots of grow difference between these varieties:: One has not shown any stem and foliage yet, another just started appearing a few days ago, and the other five buckets show great growth, I have hilled them once already, so one last hilling in 10-15 days and they'll be good to go and good to grow until Christmas harvest!
My 7 buckets contain Agatha, Agria, Île de Batz, Lacrima Cristi and Nectar varieties.
I have 9 more buckets coming this week, with Allians, Annabelle, Chérie (nutty flavor), Colomba and Jazzy varieties.
This time, I wont plant all 2 levels at the same time, just the bottom level, and add the second level after the leaves of the first one start showing up. My substrate is 2 thirds of free municipal compost and one third of heavy garden soil, as I didn't have any money for a fancy optimized substrate. It works wonders for leaves so far, I'll see what it does for the leaves in 2 months.
This soil high in compost does not seem to work well for anything else though, like beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, spinach, or leek. These will need much less compost and a bit more light lime sand. Plus, it drinks a lot of water...
If this kind of autumn growing goes well, I'll have my own seed potatoes for spring, without needing a long storage period, so I'll probably try again next year, by and by selecting the tastiest varieties that work well in these conditions.
I thought about towers too, and the best results seem to come from cylinders of chicken wire with a larger diameter than your pails. And you could also grow, say strawberries vertically in the same cylinder. But your experience makes me wonder if it would not be better to make 3 or 4 little incisions on the stem right above the leaves on the main stem, and maybe even cut these leaves, each time you hill them. This could force the growth of new potato-bearing roots at each of these cuts. I'll actually try this on my winter potatoes, one bucket with cuts, one without, of the same variety.
Rather than cylindrical towers, I might rather try rectangular ones, say 40x80 cm for a first try. You build 30 cm high coffers with a steel armature and chicken wire on all 4 sides and the bottom. You put the seed potatoes in the first coffer on the ground, filled with soil, plus an empty coffer on top, so that the potato stems can grow through the chicken wire holes. Then you hill that second level and put another empty coffer on top. You can probably pile up 4 coffers this way for a vigorous variety.
I had also thought about harvesting early potatoes first, that's why rectangular towers seemed easier to design with this constraint, as you just need to make the front side of chicken wire partially removable (for instance, hinged alongside the bottom),. Then you can just tip over this front side, harvest the early potatoes and dig out the soil without the above sections crashing down on you because of the chicken wire and the steel armature supporting the coffers, put new soil in the bottom coffer and grow some more stuff there. It's not clear however if this would effect the growth of the rest of the plant in the upper sections, but it should work fine with determinate varieties, as you lay seed potatoes (i.e. different plants) in each section, unlike one seed potato of an indeterminate variety in the bottom section only.
€4.04 35l buckets: tarpin-chavet.fr/bacs/76-bac-de-jardin-30-35-litres.html#/49-contenance-35_litres (in France)
They seem to be the right size and volume for single height buckets.
You have really put a lot of thought and work into this. Some great ideas. Thanks so much 😀
@@shortseasongarden Well I have a tiny garden, so it's easy to get crazy ideas for space efficient growing devices. Still, it's just potatoes, the cheapest vegetable there is, so we must grow it cheaply too, even more expensive early and specialty potatoes.
I didn't grow much potatoes before, but I figured I could grow some in containers on the terrace, since the veggie garden is cramped.
The objective with having new seed potatoes in each layer is to increase the yield per area of garden. If you did 3 layers then you’re effectively growing 3 times the area in that space.
Good point. I'll have to try that next time. Thanks for the input.
Didn’t know Jordan Peterson was a farmer
The trick is to plant new seed potatoes each time you add a level, that way all the levels will have potatoes.
Our old insurance man did this in tires and had great results
the result did not suprise me for two reasons firstly the amount of nutrients that where available went towards producing more and more stem secondly its much more difficult to keep it in the right temp and humidity in a container like this because its much more exposed to the heat and sun and the traped heat could not decipate furthermore the weird shape of the potatoes can be atributed the unstable humidity and temperature levels (yes compaction is an issue too). its a nice experiment though great job!
Thank you. If I try it again, I definitely will be using something other than plastic 5 gallon (20 litre) pails to contain the soil.
Stack them upside down and they will lift easily
I expected the leaves and tubes to take too much energy to keep grow upwards and not having much to store as potatoes. Good experiment nevertheless.
We are trying the same experiment but with a wire cage, first dirt then straw and repeat on up as they grow! You mentioned the energy the plant puts into growing taller/ reduced production of potatoes makes sense (unfortunately) all we can do is wait and see how it turns out! Have you tried the same thing again with a new approach?
@@averteddisasterbarely2339 Well, I do it as they do it at commercial scale. Dig a bit in the ground, place potato and build a pyramid shape with soil over the potato. You do this as continuous rows, one after another. It's easy to collect the potatoes, because I don't have to dig, just push the soil to reveal the potato. When it rains, the rows keep the water in between each row and get absorbed. One thing I could different is to use 80% compost mixed with straws, something rich in nutrient, but soft and holding the moisture. The potatoes need sun and water. That's all.
@@DarkGT thanks for your response! Because this is our first time at growing potatoes, I've just learned that the potatoes you use make all the difference as to yield....determinate /Indeterminate, the first only grow at one level, the second grow at many levels ! Have you tried both? Sometimes I find the people who watch these videos have more knowledge than the people making them !
@@averteddisasterbarely2339 I'm sure you are the expert here :)
I know there are many tips and trick to grow potatoes, but at the end of the day it's just potato. Plant it in sunny spot, water - that's all most of the time.
Me and my father grow potatoes we plant from maybe 15+ years and don't even know what is the varieties of the potato plants. One is normal yellow, good for baking, frying. The other is red elongated and it is good for mashing. They grow as bush, determinated or whatever, could be like some nightshade plants, can't say.
Some people will tell you to remove some of the tubes, so less but large potato will grow, but you will lose on volume of the production.
Some will advice on mixture of fertilizer - chemical - nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus , iron, calcium etc. But is a fertile soil you don't need much.
One organic way, nobody else on home gardening will told you is to use the compost as tea for bacteria fertilizer. You place some alive compost in water for 2 hours and you hope the right bacteria in there multiple. After that you use the water to water you plants. The microorganisms are know to benefit the plants, like creating colony inside the root system and helping with nutrient absorption. Also wood chips as top layer, the fungus also can have this property.
Other popular channel you can seek info from are : Self Sufficient Me and Epic Gardening. The first one uses raised beds and have huge success rate.
@@DarkGT by no means! Your approach would be great if we had the room but it's very limited, that's why the towers!
So if I didn't miss something you used 4 seed potatoes for the towers and a bunch more for in the ground. If this is true than the towers are a lot more efficient with the seed potatoes than the ground is.
So yes and no. I started with 5 pounds of seed potatoes. I planted 4 potatoes in pails and the remainder in the ground. So yes, I had more potatoes in the ground than in the pails. Throughout the late summer I harvested some potatoes from the ground as “new potatoes”. At the end of the season, I attempted to mark off 4 of the remaining plants in the ground for my comparison. Admittedly it is hard to tell where the tubers from one plant end and where the next one starts, especially after the potato plants themselves have died. So no, as best I could measure, I did not get more potatoes from the towers than from 4 plants in the ground. I did get nearly as many though, so from the point of view of someone with space constraints, the towers could be an advantage. Hopefully this reply clears up the confusion rather than adding to it 😀
Boss you don't have enough room in buckets , next time use tire's
Yes. I realized that after the fact. 😞. Working on a different design for next year.
@@shortseasongarden boss. Let’s talk. I have an idea for you.
@@CanadianTrini I’m certainly open to ideas.
Use the pails upside down, come off easier. Potatoes aren't tomatoes, no such thing as indeterminate, the roots go sideways, and few from the stem.
Didn’t think of upside down. Definitely would have been easier. I’m getting a lot of great ideas from these comments.
Potatoes absolutely are categorised as determinate vs indeterminate.
In England, they call them "early" or "late" but it's the same thing.
Last summer, my determinate potato varieties generally produced exactly 8 mid sized spuds each before dying off.
Whereas my indeterminate varieties continued producing scores, absolute bunches of potatoes, long after they had already produced an abundant crop of large potatoes.
If I had left them to continue growing, and kept milling them up, they would have yielded about 60 to 80 good sized potatoes each.
These potatoes did indeed grow all along the stem, everywhere that they flopped onto the ground.
This variety was "Up To Dates", an old Scottish spud bred in 1896.
@@rubygray7749 mmmm never heard of the terms applied to potatoes. You can get some large potatoes from 'first earlies' if left to grow for longer. 'Maincrop' potatoes are generally planted later and left longer to obtain medium to large potatoes better for storage. But, it's down to the weather and soil as to what crop you eventually get. In the north of England we don't go in for fancy ways, maybe where you are it's completely different.
Do Not peel your potatoes when you boil them. and maybe steaming is better. More nutrition left in cooked potato.
you do it wrong
you neet car tieres
not whit buckets hehe
That's what several people have said. I may try that next year. Thanks.
@@shortseasongarden hehe its oke im not a gardener but ive seen it done
the dam buckets ar to smal
@@shortseasongarden also it wil look muche better
paint the tieres green and it wil look even beter if i only had a garden hehehe
Please just stop
You have no idea what a tower is or why to use them
It is NOT pails