Well that looks interesting. I know what you mean about it looking funky bad once the rain hit. Mine did too.

I tried growing potatoes in straw in a 3-foot diameter "tower" several years ago and it was a complete bust. Even though our May and June are usually pretty wet, the straw didn't seem to hold moisture evenly. The tower sat on bare ground. There were a few soggy areas, but mostly very dry spots, and almost no spuds at the end of 4 months. I belive small animals (voles? Mice?) got in and ate the few small spuds that formed. I've done a lot of reading on the web about various ways to grow potato towers, and I have found almost no one who demonstrated that it really did succeed with facts and photos. I now grow potatoes in a large container of 5-1-1 that's wide and about 18 inches deep.

well i wouldnt say my experiment was a complete bust, but it wasnt what i was thinking it could be originally. i did get some potatoes. i got more potatoes than if they had been horizontal, in the ground....just because they were growing vertically. thats a reason why the tower method should work out good, because potatoes will grow vertically if they can, and ideally produce more potatoes along the longer roots.

again here it is really wet, at least for a part of the year we get tons of moisture, then none in high summer. so in that the straw did pretty good, it held the rains of spring and then was moist even when the weather was dry. i use straw a lot for growing and mulching, and even though it does live up to it rep as far as water retention, the key is that it has to have a LOT of water to begin with. otherwise it stays dry. but it is good at holding water....

i just wanted this perpetual potato tower, where i could keep harvesting the top and leave the fatty ones on the bottom to keep producing. now that i think about it, maybe thats not a good idea, but its what i was wanting.

other people do them where they slowly fill them up, as they grow, they keep throwing a bunch of straw in every week or two...right over the new growth of the potatoes, so that they keep growing longer and then the production of new potatoes happening on the root is more. i did that a little, but got to the top real fast, cause it started off pretty high to begin with.

but yeah i wouldnt say it was a bust, but it wasnt like...amazing, like i thought it could be!

now i am doing something closer to the ruth stout method of growing potatoes...well i have some others in regular beds...but where the towers used to be i threw down the tiny ones that i pulled out of the tower(there were tons of tiny ones, as well as some big ones, they werent finished), threw a bunch of straw on top, and called it good =)

I found the old (2011) thread where I discussed my experience with growing potatoes in straw in a container. Although my experience wasn't so great, another member on that thread has photos of his yield from a potato bin. He didn't use straw, but he did get a good yield. You might find the discussion and photos interesting:

Tale of two potato bins

I don't think most varieties of potatoes will "grow vertically," by the way. They produce tubers on stolons that emerge from the original tuber. In most cases, they only produce one tuber at the end of each stolon. Some people believe that the few potatoes that might produce more tubers over the course of the season are late potatoes that require 130 days or more to mature.

Beesneeds: if your seed potatoes have sprouts that don't look damaged, they should be OK. If they haven't sprouted yet and don't when brought into the house, you probably need to get new ones.

Thanks for the info Ohio, it was pretty cool. And I haven't brought in the seed taters yet, I need to grab those and get that done.