Growing potatoes for the first time, and I'm afraid I've received so much contradictory information for various peoples and sources that I may have "frankensteined" (stitched) together a growing solution that isn't going to yield much.
My wife wanted to grow potatoes in "vertical" (stacked) beds. So I built a bunch of 2ft x 2ft boxes (no floors or ceilings, just sides) out of red cedar 2x6s.
I took some potatoes from the back of the pantry that were growing "eyes" (chitting?) on them and cut them into chunks where each chunk had a really big/solid eye on it.
I placed the first 2x6 box on the ground and filled it with organic potting soil (6, about 6" worth of soil). I then buried 4 of these "homemade seed potatoes" near the 4 corners of the box in about 2" of soil (so they have about 4" of soil beneath them and 2" above them).
Then I placed the 2nd 2x6 box on top of the first one and filled it with more organic potting soil. So by the time I was done, the seed potatoes had about 4" of soil beneath them and ~8" of soil above them (2" from the remainder of the first box and 6" from the 2nd).
That was about 2 weeks ago. Today I looked at the box and, sure enough, we have potato plants/branches growing up out of the soil (so, out of the top of the 2nd box):
So I'm unsure of how to proceed from here. Do I just wait until the plants are all taller then the 2nd box, and then add a 3rd box on top of it and cover them back up in soil? How do I keep adding layers of boxes and allowing the potato plants to keep growing up into higher and higher layers, producing potatoes the entire time?