Potato Towers

Potatoes are a very interesting plant.  It is like the bizarre recluse of the edible plants.  We only use the part that grows underground.  Someone inexperienced with a potato plant may not recognize it from the above ground foliage.
Hilling potatoes is the process of creating a hill of dirt around the visible plant to give the underground tubers more room.  There is some controversy on whether or not hilling increases production. I am going to go ahead and give it a try just in case it works.
This can take a lot of room and my small garden does not give me enough room for the large spread out hill so we have gotten creative. We have gone vertical and turned potato hills into small potato towers. 
All this really means is that we have added something to hold the dirt around the base. And there are multiple methods to doing this. We have created some from 5 gallon buckets.  We cut the bottoms out of the buckets so we can set the bucket over the plant.  The plant grows up through the bucket and dirt is added over time.  These are simple buckets from a home improvement store. 

In addition to buckets, old tires work good for potato towers. I did not bother buying tires for this purpose because they are expensive and I am throwing them on the ground and filling them with dirt.  Old tires cost money to dispose of so free old tires are usually available if you look around and ask.  

All of my potatoes are actually planted in a hole in the ground.  The tower is really to test if the plant will add potatoes further up the stem.  There seems to be a lot of discussion on whether potato towers are fact or fiction.  Therefore it will be interesting to see how ours turn out.