One thing that I thought when I first saw a concept for these was HAY, where in the heck am I going to get HAY I don't live on a RANCH. I don't know these things! Then I thought...You know...Maybe my readers thought the same things. So I thought maybe you could benefit from this tutorial as well.
We all know potatoes are inexpensive. But what could be more inexpensive, healthy, and REWARDING than growing your OWN right at home! I've decided that I'm going to do Red potatoes, Yukon Gold Potatoes, and Sweet Potatoes.
Here are the basic tools that you are going to need. You can get them all from your local hardware store like Lowe's or home depot (and many of them you probably already have)
Rabbit Fencing. Personally This is what I got, here and I already had it - so I didn't have to buy it!
Hay. You can get this at Lowe's or Home Depot. You pay for it in the gardening department and an associate will point you the direction where to drive your car. they will walk over and load it into your vehicle. It's like $7 bucks for an entire bale of it.
wire clippers
fertilized soil. I used this It's $3 per cubic foot.
sprouted potatoes, whatever kind you like
zip ties
landscape fabric (optional)
scissors
gardening gloves (optional, but recommended)
The first thing you need to do is make a circle with your wire and clip it off. Zip tie the wire until the circle is secure. I just used 3 zip ties one near the top, on near the middle and one at the very bottom.
Here is a closer look at the Zip Tied Wire
Once you have your circle Zip Tied you can do one of two things. You can either.
1. Decide on the Potato Tower's forever and ever home and begin putting the dirt and hay in it
2. You can give the potato tower a fabric bottom which will allow you a bit of freedom to move the tower if you need to. Keep in mind, once these things are filled a few times, you are NOT going to want to move them, and these fabric bottoms are not going to hold. So you may want to decide pretty quickly where you want them. I moved mine around a few times and they did okay.
If you want to make the fabric bottom make a square out of landscape fabric and put your wire circle in the middle of it. cut strips outward at each wire interval with scissors as seen below
Tuck the fabric up over the wire so it hangs onto the bottom of the potato tower.
It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact it won't be! But it should look a little something like this.
Tie the fabric in double knots (square knots, granny knots, some fancy fisherman's knot, I don't care.) until it's knotted down all the way around. Feel free to trim off excess fabric.
If you want to skip creating the fabric bottom, this is where you'll pick up. Fill the bottom of the cylinder with hay. You'll want to do this for at least 8 inches.
Make a donut hole on the inside of the hay that you just put in the tower.
Fill the hole with dirt.
Bury your potatoes with the sprouts pointing up! cover them with several inches of dirt.
When we see that there is green coming up out of the dirt, then I will post another blog about what to do next. I will post the link to this blog.
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