Potato Box Time

So I love potatoes.  In every form.  And thought I'd just go ahead and plant a few in my garden.  So the first year I dropped a couple of red potatoes into the front square foot garden area and got potatoes.  Wonderful, crunchy, flavorful, red potatoes.  The next year I was over joyed to find that I had volunteers coming up.  Obviously I missed a couple of small ones when pulling them out the year before.  Well I'm into my 3rd season and once again I have volunteers.  Enough.  Time for them to move out and get their own place. 

Welcome to my potato box.  A simple square unit that stacks on top of it's self to create a space for all my potatoes to grow.   I found this idea on another website and then created my own.

Potato Box!

The first year started really well.  Created box, check.  Get soil, check.  Buy and plant Yukon gold potatoes, check.  Marvelous growing commences and then they die.  What?  What do you mean they are the wrong variety for a potato box?  Really.  Crap.  So back to step 3 this year.  Created box (yeah, I already have that).  Get soil (well I just re-composted what I already had).  Buy and plant red potatoes, check.  Marvelous growing has already started.  Now we wait.

When I was cleaning the box out from last years catastrophe I found a couple of Yukon gold babies so I am trying them in another experiment in another part of the garden.  Stacking boxes on my existing square foot garden.  We have to wait on this one too.  Don't you just love my shadow :)  And yes that weird green thing around the box is my old swing from last year.  Rather than dumping it we are recycling.  This year it will be the support for my beans.

 

 

In the mean time - how to make a potato box. 

 

 

Your going to need 6 2"x6" 8' boards

I used redwood so that it would be with us for a lot of years

Your also going to need 2 6' 1"x1" boards

These are the corners that your seeing above. 

These are also redwood

A bunch of 3" deck screws

A saw (obviously)

A drill

You'll note too that my top box in the picture has a clasp on it.

This is so I can access the box bottom when the rest of the box has been stacked. 

It's a cheater way of getting to the potatoes sooner.

 

 

You are going to make 6 squares.  Cut your 8' boards into 4 equal parts.  I won't give you an exact measurement since all boards are not created equally.  Measure your board and kick in your 5th grade math and divide into 4.

 

Now drill all the boards before trying to assemble.  Pilot holes will keep your boards from splitting open.   We lined the boards up so that the end of each board went up flush against the side of the board that it was to be attached too.  So our boards made as perfect a square as possible.  We made 6 of these boxes.  Note here!  One of our boxes has a clasp.  You can easily get a hinge and clasp and install on one of yours if you wish.

 

Now to get this stacking thing rolling you are going to take those 2 - 1" x 1" board and cut them in half - giving you 4 - 36" boards.  In the corners of the two bottom squares you are going to (again with pilot holes) attached the uprights.  We attached them to the bottom square first then stacked the next on top (the one with the clasps) and then screwed that one on too.  Note* the other 4 boxes behind the box.  Those are for adding later as the growing continues.

Once the potatoes are about a foot tall then you are to put on another box and add mulch, straw or whatever to the top.  Only covering 1/2 of the plant.  Then wait - it will continue to grow and you will continue to stack and add more mulch, straw or whatever till you reach the top.

Keep the watering consistent.  Harvesting begins when it starts to die.

Happy Gardening!