With so many people going back to the “Little House on the Prairies” lifestyle and baking bread, I decided to go in another direction and start to grow potatoes for the family. So I built a growing potato planter – in our front yard.
I went to my local lumber store and bought the supplies:
- Six 2x6s by 8 feet long
- Two 2x4s by 8 feet long
- Three bags of gardening soil.
And then I cut the lumber to size. The 2x6s into 23″ and 21″ pieces for a total of 12 pieces 23″ long and 12 pieces 21″ long.
And then as you can see in the picture above, I made 23″x 23″ “frames”. To hold the frames together I put ONE construction screw in each corner.
Truth be told, I am the classic “over-builder”. I am the kind of guy who figures that “I better add a couple extra screws to hold’er together” but in this case – don’t. Because later on, when you want to harvest the potatoes, you remove the 2x6s from the bottom of the planter.
After I had the 6 frames for the growing potato planter screwed together I put one of the 33″ long 2x4s into each corner of the first 2×6 frame of the growing potato planter.
Now, here’s a pro-tip – it would have been easy to put a construction screw into the 2×4 from inside the frame and then into the 2×6. But do NOT do that.
The secret to this growing potato planter is that it “grows”. As the potato plants get taller, you add another frame and fill with soil or potato plant mulch (lawn clippings work really well).
And then, when it is harvest time, you remove the frames starting from the bottom of the planter! You want some baby potatoes? Remove the bottom layer of the planter and get yourself some baby potatoes. Brilliant.
Once all the frames are built and in place – like the growing potato planter in the photo just above, it will look like it does above. Of course those 2x4s that are laying to the side in the picture would be inside the planter.
Dump in the soil and there it is. My growing potato planter. Which will be filled with seed potatoes this weekend. Stay tuned to see how my potato growing experiment works out.