Maximize the yield of potato in a micro plot of 3 x 3 feet.

• Which varieties work best in your garden?
• Which varieties find the best use in your kitchen?
• Which store best without refrigeration?
• It's all about finding the correct varieties for optimal vertical growth in a container.

Potato are cheap! Why grow garden potato?

True, field potato are cheap (valued at 20 cents a pound) ... but potato tubers are like sponges! You really want garden potatoes, grown without chemicals, with edible peels. The benefits of eating potatoes with the skins include more fibers, higher trace elements, higher anti-oxydants (up to 90 times more), anti cancer enzymes. Organic garden potato can fetch up to $5 a pound at farmer's markets. Grow your own and save a lot!

Click here to read more about the health benefits of potato.

This is the yield promised from a 9 square feet area. The container is assembled as the vines grow. You need to keep adding soil (mixed with compost and leaves) as soon as the vines grow out.

If you leave the vines exposed to the light for too long, they will stop growing stolons (the root system that connects the tubers to the vine).

The main concern is to ensure proper drainage - any container should have the bottom removed and sinked in the soil a couple of inches.

• The Potato Bag (ideal solution if you are not certain about the variety)
• The Potato Box (advanced solution for tuber varieties that are proven to set tubers high above the original soil line)

Before you waste any of your time with "store purchased", modern varieties ...

Be aware that to succeed with vertical growth you must use potato tubers that develop long stolons (the root part that connects the vine to the tuber) and possibly with tendence to develop upward.

Be aware that this desired tuber development feature is counter-culture to what farmers want. Farmers, and for them the modern potato breeding industry, want tuber setting all at the same level in the soil for easier harvest and to prevent greening of tubers that may be exposed to the light, while developing above the soil line.

Find a catalog with 250 different varieties .. see tuber pictures, descriptions and suggested recipes. Search in the description for TALL VINES .. those varieties are more likely to work best.

Please return to this web page to find the reports of yields harvested from container growth - both in bags or boxes.

In the bags we only grow one variety. We expect to have at least 110 bags tested in 2010. Click here to see the bag page>

In order to compare yields, please build boxes of the same size as shown, and plant 12 seed pieces per box - 2 rows of 6 pieces spaced about 6" apart in the row.

Read on, if you use a bag, we suggest to use 6 seed pieces. You may argue that these are too many seed pieces. We argue that more seed crowding produces larger yields.

If you'd like to participate with the Kenosha Potato Project - here are your options:

• If you live in Southeastern Wisconsin - please email me at seedsaver@curzio.com
• If you live somewhere else in the USA or Canada - are you a member of Seed Saver Exchange? We have a few gardener who participate with the Kenosha Potato Project within the Seed Saver Exchange.
• We have members of our Global Potato Network in Europe and are always please to cooperate with any gardener / farmer. Sending seed abroad is restricted or difficult ... but we may find ways to cooperate.