Potato Idea

I was messing around on some blogs I follow and found this wonderful idea about potato planting from HomeGrown Evolution. But further poking round I found this step by step instructions and results on Build as you grow potato bins. This is essentially a square foot gardening method, but you build up not out.


I was unaware the reason behind "mounding" potatoes. In order to get a good harvest you mound the spuds to create more space between the top of the seed potato and the soil. This gap is where new potatoes grow. the taller the space the more spuds you get. I've heard people use old tires and when the potato gets as tall as the top of the tire, you add another tire and more dirt inside. This method is essentially the same thing.

When I planted the potatoes originally, I intended to mound them in the same raised bed with little thought about the why of mounding. But when I read the build as you grow article it states that the average yield is 10 pounds of potatoes per 1 pound of seed potato using the mounding or hilling method. This way however he got 25 pounds per 1 pound of seed potato. And he further states reports of up to 60 pounds!!!

I planted 2.5 pounds of seed potatoes, for each type of potato. Which means I could get up to 150 pounds of spuds!!!

This is what my raised bed looks like. I tried to show the height difference from the other raised bed in the foreground.


We opted to modify the bed we had since the potatoes were already growing when I discovered this. Jacob and I added a longer 2x4 in each corner so we could effectively raise the bed by 2 additional 2X6's. Giving us a raised bed that is 1 foot deeper 1.5' deep total. Next year we may decide to try and build it even higher and contain all the different potato varieties to one raised bed... but next spring is a long way off so we'll deal with that later.