Potato Tower

Use locally-available material, simple technics and tools to build Potato Towers to:

• Harvest a high yield of potatoes on a very limited surface,
• Lower potato watering effort (if needed),
• Lower potato harvesting effort,
• Bring foods closer to the kitchen,
• Inspire people through attractive green design.

Difficulty

Easy Easy

Duration

1 hour(s) hour(s)

Categories

Food & Agriculture

Cost

0 EUR (€)

potato, tower, garden, organic, permaculture en none Creation 0

Introduction

Acknowledgements

The landscape is quite steep at Lake Bunyonyi Ecovillage. Thus, planting in terraces requires important effort to work the ground for potato plantation. Moreover, potato harvesting is also work-intensive as one must dig out the potatoes from the ground. On top of that, the gardens are quite far from the kitchen which adds some effort to the process between collecting and transporting before preparing the food. Finally, the available place between the houses of the ecovillage is limited.

Our solution and its expectable benefits

Use locally-available material, simple technics and tools to build Potato Towers to:

• Harvest a high yield of potatoes on a very limited surface,
• Lower potato watering effort (if needed),
• Lower potato harvesting effort,
• Bring foods closer to the kitchen,
• Inspire people through attractive green design.

Materials

• Parts:
  • (8) Wooden poles (sturdy),
  • (1*) Pipe (not available on site => we used stones rather than a pipe);
• Consumables:
  • Flexible wood sticks (or hence fence wire),
  • Banana leaves (or newspaper, carton),
  • Stones (see *),
  • Potato eyes,
  • Soil,
  • If available, compost,
  • Water,
  • Mulching material (corn stalks, rice hulls, hay, straw, dry leaves, BRF …);

Tools

• Tools (see FAQ & Troubleshooting? For other alternatives):
  • (1) Panga (or machete, axe),
  • (1) Spear (or djembe ),
  • (1) Set of bags (or wheelbarrow, bucket)
  • (1) Bucket (or arrosoir )
  • (1)°Rope (or tape measurer);

Step 1 - How?

Refer to the pictures available in the gallery. Proceed as follows to build you own Potato Tower.

• Team:
  • Two (more people, more fun!)
• Required skills:
  • Basic skills to properly use the tools
• Preliminary requirements:
  • NA

We used local material to build our potato tower. Feel free to look for options that are locally available in your environment. For instance, we used banana leaves instead of newspaper; we used flexible wood sticks instead of hence fence wire; etc.