Bamboo Potato Towers

Potato Towers are an easy way to grow and harvest potatoes in your home garden.  Bamboo fencing is easy to acquire, and is a reusable and renewable resource.  We cut our rolls in half and made two towers for the VCoop backyard garden.  Here is a picture of the tower a week after firstt planting.  We had a bag of potatoes that were sprouting in the kitchen.  We dropped 'em in and they took off.

As the plants grow, we kept adding straw and compost, burying the new growth up to the height of the newest leaves,  a month later the plants have already reached the top!

We'll keep adding pictures here as the tower goes through it's cycle.  Start yours now and grow with us!

The Many Benefits of Chayote

From root to fruit to shoot, Chayote is an edible that adds versatility to permaculture landscapes.  A native from mexico, and a member of the gourd family, Chayote is known by many names as it has migrated across the globe and into many diverse culinary dishes.  Some call it Cho-Cho, some Sayote, and some know it by the name Merleton just to name a few.  There are as many ways to cook it as there are names.

For a great selection of recipes, check out Chayote recipes at Pinterest.  Just recently we harvested some shoots from the Art City garden and used them freshly chopped in a green salad with purslane, mustard greens, arugula, and young endive leaves.  These greens were tossed in a yogurt garlic onion dressing with fresh cracked pepper and lemon juice.  Excellent and healthy!

Chayote is easy to grow in our local climate.  Perfect for trellising over border fences, the pear shaped fruit hangs from heart shaped leaves and curling shoots.  Grow Chayote!  It adds a tasty vertical element to your garden.

photo by: Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên cc-by-sa