Thanks, everyone for all the thoughts and links. When I saw "grow in straw," I do mean their roots are in soil, but instead of hilling with soil, you hill with straw. I know many people feel towers don't work, but I had wonderful results last year from a grow bag - and the principle is similar. Can anyone tell me why it would be better than a wood tower? I don't expect 100 lbs. of potatoes from a tower (I think that's ridiculous), but I also don't have room to grow potatoes traditionally. I've read (I wish I remembered where) that when the potato plant "bumps into" a hard surface (like the sides of a grow bag or the wood from a tower), it branches out, creating more chance for potatoes to grow. Also, in my research I found that many failures were due to using early variety potato...and many others didn't mention what type of potato they used. My thought was to continue with the grow bags, but to try a tower, too. But getting back to my original question: Is there any good reason not to use straw for hilling? (It's just as easy, in my experience, to break stems with soil as it is with hay.)

You can grow potatoes right on top of the ground. Till the area cut your potatoes to have 2 eyes each. Place just 1/2 under the surface and cover lightly with mulch. Ie straw, saw dust, chopped leaves, grass clipping. As the potatoe grows keep putting on more mulch. The deeper the better. Potatoes will be just under the mulch.

The word is Locavores. It's been in use for at least three years and, of course, it can be adjusted for more than 40 miles. It encourages people to support local farms and farmers markets. Hard to find tea and coffee though.

Not sure why this old thread got resurrected, but... I just harvested a pathetic crop of spuds. Early this summer, little baby slugs showed up on my potato plants and within a week, the little buggars had completely eaten all but two plants. I had one Bison and one Peruvian Purple survive, and they yielded just enough spuds to overwinter for next year's seed. *whimper* I use Ciscoe's method (see link below). I have two garbage cans and one 3x3x3 bin (actually one of the old wooden slat compost bins that Bellevue was giving out about 15 years ago). I usually have a ton of spuds. I have gotten seed from Ronnigers.com, Irish-eyes.com, and a couple of local nurseries. Actually, NOW is the time to pre-order if you want something special for next spring. About when to harvest: Ciscoe says to wait until the stalks die back, then wait another two weeks after that. I've waited even longer, and the tubers seem to keep just fine in the dirt, as long as you don't have any bugs in the soil that start to munch on them. Here is a link that might be useful: Ciscoe Morris' page on growing potatoes.