Potato Towers – Best Varieties to Grow and Other Tips for Success
This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.
Planting potatoes in potato towers with straw and soil is an excellent alternative growing option to avoid having to dig up your potatoes (and risk injuring the potatoes in the process). We share an easy to build tower, plus the right way to get the most plants from your potato starts and the best varieties to grow
This modified raised bed method also helps to save garden space, making it a great choice for small gardens.
Table of contents
- Growing Potatoes in Potato Towers – Materials List
- What Varieties of Potatoes Work Best in Towers?
- Preparing the Potatoes for Planting for a Bigger Harvest
- Preparing the Potato Towers
- Planting the Potatoes in the Potato Towers
- How many potatoes will I get from a potato tower?
- Avoid this Potato Tower Mistake
- Harvesting Your Homegrown Potatoes
- What to Do with the Soil from the Potatoes
- More Gardening Information
Growing Potatoes in Potato Towers – Materials List
To make and plant a potato tower, you will need:
- Field fencing 4 feet wide, around 6-9 feet long
- Straw (not hay)
- Compost or garden soil
- Seed potatoes (about 2 lbs per tower)
What Varieties of Potatoes Work Best in Towers?
To get the most out of your potato tower, look for longer season varieties (sometimes referred to as indeterminate potatoes). These types of potatoes will continue to set more potatoes over a longer period, so they’re a better fit for the tower method.
Some indeterminate and late season potato varieties include:
- All Blue
- All Red
- Amarosa*
- Bintje
- Blue Mac
- Desiree
- Elba
- French Fingerling*
- German Butterball
- Green Mountain
- Irish Cobbler
- Norland
- Nicola
- Pink Fir Apple*
- Russian Blue
- Russet Nugget
- Russet Burbank
- Ranger Russet
- Umatilla Russet
*indicates fingerling potatoes
Preparing the Potatoes for Planting for a Bigger Harvest
Whether you’re using the traditional method or towers, if you use whole seed potatoes, they will grow, but you will be wasting a lot of potential potato plants. To maximize your seed potatoes, you’ll want to cut them up.
A day or two before you plant, cut your seed potatoes into 2 inch chunks with at least 2 eyes on each chunk. It takes a little bit of time and practice to get a feel for where to cut each potato.
If you’re unsure, leave them on the bigger side because fewer potato plants are better than no potato plants! Lay them out on a baking sheet, tray, tarp, etc. and place in a breezy and dry location to cure for 12-48 hours.
This will help the cut sides scab over so they are less likely to rot in the ground before sending up sprouts. You will need 12-24 seed potato pieces per tower.
Preparing the Potato Towers
Start unrolling your field fencing to form an upright cylinder. Its best to keep the cylinder around 2-3 feet in diameter because anything smaller may fall over easily and anything bigger won’t fall over easily enough! (we’ll get to that a little later). Cut the wire with wire cutters and fold the wire back on itself to catch the other side.
Planting the Potatoes in the Potato Towers
Start by choosing a spot for your towers. I have kept mine together in the past but I recently realized that (duh!) if I separated them they would be less likely to all go down if there was an insect or disease problem.
So if you are doing more than one tower, consider placing them in different locations (and away from tomatoes too).
Once you’ve chosen your spot start by lining the bottom of the tower with straw.
Then begin filling your potato tower with a foot of soil. Arrange your seed potatoes around the edges about 3-4 inches from the edge and about 6 inches apart.
Be sure to point the eyes outward as the plants will be growing out the side of the tower. You should be able to use 4-6 seed potatoes per layer.
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Keep in mind that the farther apart they are the potentially larger your potatoes will be.
Arrange more straw and add another foot of soil. Arrange another layer of potatoes. Water each layer well. Continue like this until the tower is full.
I like to add calendula or marigold as a companion plant to the top, which can help with pest control and looks pretty! Learn more about companion planting here.
Some people like to grow salad greens on top.
How many potatoes will I get from a potato tower?
It really varies depending on the variety you choose, how close you plant them and how rich the soil is. A good estimate is 10-20 lb per 1 lb of seed potatoes.These potato towers can produce around 50 pounds of potatoes.
Avoid this Potato Tower Mistake
NOTE: If you live in a warm, dry or windy area, the tower method may not be a fit for you. As noted in the article, “A Simple Way to Get High Yields of Potatoes“:
“…researchers in tropical climates have found that when soil temperatures rise above 75°F (25°C), potato plants signal their roots to stop making tubers.
Instead, the plants may rev up other reproductive strategies, like developing more fertile flowers, or popping out little green potato-like organs on the main stem.
Daytime heating of roots is one reason why potatoes grown in above-ground containers may fail in warm summer climates. Potatoes can take warm air temperatures, but when the roots warm up too, productivity plummets.
A second problem with growing potatoes in towers, pots or bags is the dwarfing effect caused by the containers. The plants sense that they are growing close together, which makes them produce numerous small tubers rather than a few large ones.”
Growing potatoes with mid-afternoon shade may help with keep them from overheating. but those with high temperatures may need to either grow a different starch or try potatoes in their cool season.
Harvesting Your Homegrown Potatoes
When your potato plants have started to dry up and die back you can begin harvesting. Get a large tarp and lay it on the ground next to the tower. Push the tower over and gently pull the soil and potatoes out.
This part is really fun for kids young and old. It’s one of my favorite end of summer activities! Because dumping the soil out loosens it, you can comb through the soil with your hands, making it easier to grab potatoes without harming them.
Use your harvest to make something tasty like potato pancakes, or cure them and store them in the root cellar for later use.
What to Do with the Soil from the Potatoes
Now that you’ve dumped a bunch of soil onto a tarp, what should you do with it? It’s not a great idea to use the soil, as is, for next year’s potatoes since it could hold insects or diseases, so you have a few options:
- Solarize your soil to kill insects and disease
- Use the soil in the plot in your garden rotation that will have legumes next year
- Add the soil/straw mix to your compost
- Give the soil/straw mix to your (or somebody’s) chickens
If you want to skip the fencing, you can try potato grow bags for container gardening. Same concept!
Do you plan on growing in potato towers? Let us know how it goes in the comments!
More Gardening Information
Did you know we have over 100 gardening articles on the website, all sorted by category on the Common Sense Gardening page?
They include:
- How to Start a Garden – 10 Steps to Gardening for Beginners
- Free Printable Gardening Journal Templates and Planting Calendar
- How to Grow Garlic – From Planting to Harvest
- Starting Seeds Indoors – 11 Steps to Help You Plant Seeds with Confidence
- Growing Asparagus – Planting, Care and Harvesting a Perennial Favorite
Mindy Wood is the voice behind Our Inspired Roots, where she shares tips to slow down, simplify, become more self sufficient and live a healthier, happier life. As a wife, mom of two, writer, and aspiring homesteader, she’s always looking for ways to encourage others in living a joyful and authentic life.
Originally posted in 2016, last updated in 2019.
If you know the diameter of a circle, you can calculate the circumference (the “length” of the distance around the circle) by multiplying the diameter by 3.14 (which is pi).
So if the diameter is, for example, 20 inches, then the circumference would be 20 x 3.14 = 62.8 inches.
Since I live in Northwest Florida, I probably wouldn’t do well with a potato tower; and not really at a point where I could try it anytime soon, anyway.
I was enjoying reading your how-to, though, and still have a question that other people might benefit from the answer to. You tell what size of field fencing to use, and what diameter the tower should be, but not the length of fencing it will take for the suggested diameter. If I were to buy field fencing, I would want only enough for a/the specific project, and not buy a guestimated amount and cut off the rest. You have been doing this, so surely you must know, or could find out easily. That information would be very helpful to newbies who have never done something like this before.
I don’t know how they sell fencing down in Florida, but in Wisconsin, we can only buy it in specific lengths, like 20 feet or 50 feet, not cut to order. The article did mention the diameter of the tower, but I have added rough fence length for those who don’t care to do the math.
Hi -do you complete the tower in one go or do you wait for each layer to sprout before adding another layer?
No, you plant the tower all at once. The potato plants should naturally reach for the sunlight out of the sides of the tower.
I have constructed five potato towers in accordance with this tower inspiration. I have an empty (extra) leftover.
May I plant carrot seeds, spaced 2/3 inches apart with 12 inches of soil in-between layers with this potato tower construction?
I’m not sure I follow what you are asking, but will try to help.
Carrot seeds need to be near the surface, so they can shoot up greens to grow the roots. I would not attempt to layer them in a tower like the potatoes can be layered, but you could used the tower as a framework for a raised bed so the carrots have plenty of non-rocky soil to set their roots deep. There are some super long varieties of carrots such as Manpukuji that could potentially grow to nearly the length/height of the tower.
Thanks. Our soil leans toward clay, so root veggies don’t do too well the traditional way. I will give this a try this year and will come back to let you know how it went. 🙂 Love following you when I have time.
I hope it works well for you. Our winds are blasting again today, reminding me why I rarely attempt container plantings. Everything gets blown over. 🙂
This looks so cool! What a great way to get more potatoes!
Re your potato tower: I love this idea but wonder if the potatoes on the outside of the ring get green? I’m old school and it seems to me that there would not be enough darkness to prevent greening.
If properly set up with straw around the outside and the potato set into soil a couple inches inside the straw, risk of green potatoes should be low.
I really want to grow potatoes, I don’t know why I feel so nervous. With Corona now may be the time to take the leap. thanks for the great tutorial
It’s never a bad idea to invest in growing your own food.
oh sweety, dont be nervous. working in the garden makes me feel young and alive (I’m 62). It doesnt matter if some thing doesnt work out, some years are better for some things and not others. so laugh a lot, play in the dirt and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
This article really interested me, despite my only having a covered balcony in Florida. I have 2 cats, however, and read that the potato leaves are poisonous to cats and I KNOW my girls would be nibbling on them, so this wonderful idea is not an option for me until maybe someday when I have a yard and some way to keep pets away.
I bought sweet potato plants from the garden store. Do I have the vine stick out the sides?
I’d try some out the sides and out the top.
Can chicken wire be used as well?
As long as whatever you use is sturdy enough that it won’t tip over, you can use it.
I’m going to have to use pine needles because the children have celiac disease, and we can’t have wheat straw in the yard at all. I’ll let you know if it works.
What zone are you in? I’m in zone 7b, which gets hot. I’m going to put them where they get morning sun but not afternoon sun and hope for the best. I’ve already found I can’t grow them in garbage cans. Too hot.
Oat straw is another option. No gluten in oats.
No idea where to get oat straw and wouldn’t trust it. Oats grown in fields rotated with gluten-containing grains are not GF. Certified GF oats are grown in fields with no rotation and a specified number of miles from gluten containing grains. But I appreciate your suggestion.
Wheat straw does not contain gluten. Straw is the stem of the plant and the gluten is found in the wheat berries. The gluten is also not water soluble. I find it hard to believe straw would adversely affect your children!?
Based on how allergic I am to corn I can believe her. The process or separating the wheat from the chaff is not a clean process and they don’t exactly vacuum the dust off the straw. Allergies should be given more respect by people lucky enough to not have anything worse than hay fever.
How should potatoes be away from the edge? Should they be close to hay, or center?
“Arrange your seed potatoes around the edges about 3-4 inches from the edge and about 6 inches apart.” There’s a photo in the article where you can see an example of potato positioning. They should not be in the straw. The straw holds the dirt in.
IIm trying a potato tower for the first time, what type of straw do you use for the tower and why can’t you use flax straw?
When I use straw for potatoes. it’s typically oat or wheat straw, because that’s what we have available in our area. I don’t think there would be a problem using flax straw, as mentioned in response to your previous comment, as long as there were no herbicide or pesticide residues. So many crops get sprayed with chemicals nowadays you never know what’s going to be contaminated unless you get it from somewhere you trust and specifically ask.
What type of straw can you use e.g. wheat, flax?
Most should work, as long as they don’t have any herbicide or pesticide residues.
BTW: My son-in-law’s mother manages a chicken farm in North Carolina. She has a knock out garden. She said to start seeds in egg shells! Nutrients are still available and will assist in the growth process.
We live 30 miles west of Chicago. We usually have near 100 degree temps for a period of time during the summer. Will I be successful with those temps? Thank you
Probably. I can’t say for sure given that there are any number of variables in each garden. You’ll need to keep the tower well watered, and may want to see up where it gets afternoon shade during that part of the season.
What varieties of potatoes do well in towers? Also for a shorter growing season of 3-4 months. I am in Alberta, Canada. Thank you
If you have a variety that grows well in your area, you should be able to grow it in a tower.
I’m in Texas and I have a friend that grows his in a tower in nothing but hay. He has grown it that way for 2 years now and has great success. I’m going to try for my first time this year. I however think that I will do mine in the soil. Might do one of each and see which does best.
I’d be interested in hearing which gets better results.