Potato Cage

If our growing area is small, then it's time to get vertical. Aside from saving space, a potato cage or tubular column will simplify harvest and can also protect the tubers from animals. A simple cage can be built out of chicken wire, aviary netting or even a stack of old tires. One-inch or two- inch mesh chicken wire will work fine as long as there are no rodent around. We're using half-inch aviary netting to keep out rodents such as gophers. Any wire used should be galvanized or coated with plastic.

We'll start with a three foot long section of aviary netting to build a tubular cage with a twelve-inch diameter. The seams are knitted together by simply wrapping the cut wire ends into the adjacent loops. A round piece of aviary netting is spliced onto the bottom of the tube with a strand of wire. The top end of the tube must remain open.
This wire came from a four foot wide roll of netting, so if we dig in or anchor the cage 12 inches deep in the soil, then we'll end up with about three feet of netting above the ground.

Now we can fill the tube up to just a few inches above the existing soil level. The garden soil or aged compost will stay inside of a cage made from such a small mesh. The larger mesh diameter of chicken wire will need a layer of leaves or sticks to retain the soil. Potato starts can be planted in the cage, just below the soil surface. We're planting a seeding grown from true potato seed. With seedlings or sprouting tubers the stems should be covered with soil so that only two sets of leaves remain. Add soil to the column about once a month or as soon as the potato stem has more than three sets of leaves.

Eventually the potato stems will grow beyond the cage and may need staking. The cage itself may also need staking to keep it upright. At the end of the growing season the potato cage will be filled with stems, soil and potatoes. After the first light frost the cage can be opened to remove the potatoes. This harvest may look kind of small but it's not that bad considering we started out with just a tiny little seed. Watch volume four to find out more about growing potatoes from true potato seed or TPS.

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[horticulturevideos]

@justruse Sounds like a great technique. If you don't have rodent problems then cardboard should work fine, and it's biodegradable. Having a 5 foot tall soil tube is great, but don't forget to allow enough time for the leaves and stems to mature... big plants usually yield big harvests. Thanks for your post.

[justruse]

As an experiment, instead of a cage, i used a large piece of cardboard for the retainer ring aprox 2 ft wide & 2 ft tall, then use old bail of straw & little dirt for filler as plant grows.. planted taters at ground level till they got bout 1 ft tall, then wrapped & anchored cardboard, & started filling.. there bout 5 ft tall now from ground planting, which amazes me, cardboard is holding up really well Any thoughts on using cardboard for retainer would be appreciated>>> thx..