Growing Vertically

Though I have a bit more than half a yard out back, a lot of the space is in full shade.  To make the best of what space we have, we decided to grow our potatoes in a container that grows along with them.

We took four long stakes for the corner pieces and a bunch of cedar boards for the sides.  As the potatoes grow up we pile the dirt up around the stems and then they grow some more and we add another cedar plank.

Here is the potato planter a few weeks after planting.  You can see that we had to quickly add two more boards!

This one is after the fourth board was added.  Henry loves to help pile on more dirt to the potatoes.  It's a great toddler crop!

One thing that I am really excited about is that since we used small screws to put this together, we can simply unscrew one of the bottom boards and begin harvesting potatoes from the ground up.  We don't have to wait until they are all brown and dying back before dumping out a container.  

This particular planter is growing on the north side of our deck next to where we grow moss, actually.  It's getting about 6 hours of morning sun and growing like crazy in a space that we never really used before.

-Meghan