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Vertical Potatoes: An Appalachian Art

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Did you now you can do vertical planting of POTATOES?  No, I'm not
smokin'  that wacky tobacky, it's really true.  It's very Southern
Appalachian.  Here's how:

You take an old car tire.  (You can go to any car repair place to get these
for free, and they will smile and wave when they see you coming.)  You lay
the car tire on the ground, preferably on your worst patch of soil.  You
put a couple inches of loose dirt, dried grass clippings, leaves, straw,
and finished and/or unfinished compost on the ground inside the tire, 
and then just lay your seed potato on top.  Then cover with a couple more 
inches of compost, leaves, straw, etc.

When it sprouts and you've got green leaves growing out the top, you wait
til the green plant gets 8 or 9 inches tall, and then you fill in two more
inches of dirt, rotted straw, shredded newspapers, etc. (not all one
thing, but a good mixture), burying the bottom 2 inches of the green plant.
All summer long, you do the same thing:  the potato plant grows, you put
in more dirt; more growth, more dirt; until you're about to overflow the
tire.

 ___________
( ___________)   Then you put another tire on it, so it looks like this.
(____________)   The Dogpatch Double-Decker.
  
And you keep shoveling in dirt as the plant grows--- making sure you always
have at least 6 inches of green plant, til it looks like this:

          (@)  
        (@@)
 ______l______
( ___________ )  Then you put another tire on it
(____________)

 ____________
(____________)
( ___________ )  ...so it looks like this: 
(____________)   The Aunt Pearl Pile-Up.


And just keep putting in a spadeful of dirt, dry grass clippings, leaves,
compost, straw, all mixed together, and stacking more tires on as needed.  
f you live in a place that has really hot summers, paint the tires WHITE
(yes!  This IS Appalachia!) to reflect the sun and keep your roots coolish.
The potato plant is busy growing roots (and potatoes) in the compost all 
along that buried stem.  Don't forget to water.

And when you're ready to harvest potatoes?  KNOCK OVER THE TIRE TOWER!! 
And you'll have DOZENS of large, smooth potatoes grown in very little
space.

Julianne Wiley
Zone 6/7
Upper East Tennessee


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