Houston, we have potatoes!

So, the tatie tower was a moderate success.  I’m not sure I rightly remember how many potatoes I planted in the tower, but from the harvest, it looks like I got at least 3 potatoes for one planted. Next year I will try to remember to fertilize more, although I did use Miracle Gro soil and lots of compost.  I can remember digging up potatoes as a kid, but don’t remember how many we planted.  I looked it up and you should get three regular size potatoes and some smaller ones for each seed planted, so I think we did OK.  I have lots of mini potatoes, for which I know you pay a mint in the grocery store!

I didn’t plant that many to begin with, not being sure what I was doing and how the layers would work. Next time, I can plant more layers within the tower and space the sets further apart. I think that will make a big difference in yield.  This was a live-and-learn experiment for sure!

All in all, a pretty exciting evening digging through the dirt and finding these little golden gems.  I plan to cook them with some green beans and smoked sausage here in a day or two.  What fun! We will plant two more towers next year, just to see what happens and try some purple potatoes.  It was a pretty stress-free growing method (read: I did nothing but water when it didn’t rain).  We did have a nice little black snake baby living under the tower. He was very confused when we took away his roof.  I’m glad he had a safe warm place to grow up. As long as he stays out of the house, ha ha!

  The Potato Tower goes down!

What we saw as we took apart the straw and dirt.

Lots of dirty gems!

Rinsed off and waiting for a skillet.