Growing potatoes in straw?

[Wishin']

Thanks Jared.

I have to say I'm really pleased I decided to join this forum. You all are very friendly and helpful. I'm generally the kind of person who decides I want to do something and then researches it with those old fashion things called books, before just doing or asking others how to do X, because I don't want to bother other people.
But you have got a million books out there and half the time you don't know where to start , and nobody to say I did it this way and it worked for me. It is really nice to have someone who can point you to the right articles and just answer a simple question for you without having to consult a plethora of books.
Another nice thing is to just stumble across something you wouldn't have thought about and learn something new. It's much nicer then being on your own.

 

[journey11]

A couple of things I recall reading elsewhere is that there are certain varieties more likely to make potatoes up the stem than others and also you have a very narrow window of time to cover them as they grow up through the surface. The site said at 5 cm of growth to add more soil. Left too long, they must differentiate that growth into foliage rather than stolons. You have to stop adding soil at some point and just let them go, and of course directing a few branches out of the little notches is going to provide enough foliage to fuel some tuber growth. The video of the fella digging his tower clearly showed potatoes growing in the box quite a bit above the planting depth. It didn't look rigged to me at all. Those towers would be so simple to build your own and I think it is definitely worth experimenting. Maybe we can have a thread for that later and compare results.

I tell you what too, I am going to plant mine with uncut seed potatoes this year. I lost too many to rotting in the ground last year. It was so wet and muddy all summer.

 

[Wishin']

It would be cool to have several members all trying the experiment, and see how well it will work.

 

[Jared77]

Your welcome Wishin'

I stumbled onto their site a while back & read everything the site had to offer. The video to me looked legit & proved that the science is sound. Obviously your mileage may vary however I think they are onto something.

I figured why not give it a whirl this year. I wanted to last year but it was a CRAZY busy year for me & very little gardening was done. But this year will hopefully be a good year.

 

[Wishin']

O.K So I read all the articles over again, and some seem to contradict each other. They agree a long season crop 90-100 days is best. So here is what I have decided.

I will use yellow finn potatoes in all towers (because they were recommended in 3 of the articles).
I will make three towers, they will all be approximately 3 feet tall.
Tower one will be the henley tower, using this method http/henleypotatotower.co.uk/science/ of training the stolons out the sides to produce more nodes.
Tower two will be the irish eyes tower and method. http://info.irisheyesgardenseeds.com/
Tower three will be a tomato cage with 6 inches of dirt on the bottom and straw the rest of the way up using two potatoes one per method.

Hopefully multiple members will join in the experiment using one or more methods and we can see how well we do. And that way if something goes wrong and I utterly fail I have backup.