Your straw looks pretty loosely packed, perhaps this was a light issue?

You might try a bit if a lasagna layer of leaves or something every so often to block the sun from hitting the stem. Maybe line your screen with newsprint to block light from the sides.

Little more set-up work, but still a no-dig harvest.

Your potatoes look yummy!

I agree the straw looks loose. When I grew potatoes, once the top was a foot high I would alternate a lite layer of soil with a thicker layer of straw/dried grass clippings continuously throughout its growing season. It usually ended up about three foot tall. Best potatoes bar none.

i thought in the video, they did a 2nd and maybe even a 3rd layer of potatoes in the tower, alternating with the straw and such.

I had the same problem this year! It was my first attempting to grow potatoes in a tower. However, I used straw mixed with compost and soil, so it was much heavier and certainly preventing light from reaching the stems. I got nothing - none of the plants even attempted to grow roots anywhere above their initial depth. I'm puzzled and a bit frustrated - it was a lot of work hilling them up!

Isn't Bintje an early variety, like Yukon Gold? My understanding is that early variety potatoes only set potatoes in the first six or so inches above the seed potato no matter how tall the stems.

Ditto about the straw. The tubers need it to be dark and moist. Also, when my first attempt at potatoes in containers resulted in a poor yield, the folks at Territorial Seed attributed to a nutrient deficiency. As in any container, nutrients are leached out with every watering. They recommended an application of liquid bone meal with every other watering.

I have also heard that early potatos will not set along the entire stem. I would recommend trying late potatos instead.

It varies by potato variety. Not all of them will set fruit the whole way up the stem. Some varieties are easily forced into creating more lateral roots, some are super resistant to the practice.

I honestly do not think that potatoes care about light in the roots with regard to tuber production. They will grow potatoes so close to the surface that the tuber comes out green. In my experience, the lateral roots do not express phototrophism like the terminal root tip.

Is there any study or information on potato varieties that do best in towers? I get the idea of trying late varieties, but is there any work done on this issue? If not, it seems a great area of study for me.

I have been researching the potato tower idea and have noticed that ALL of the folks who have tried it have been disappointed with the yield. The idea is that the plants will root and make potatoes on any part of the stalk that is underground. This is simply not true. I don't know where the rumor started, but the truth is that the vine will root anywhere it touches soil, but it will only make feeder roots. The tubers are ONLY made at the bottom of the plant. There is one person on You Tube with the right idea. His ID is "CrazyFishFarmer" or something like that. He uses tires (not organic IMHO), but he builds his tower completely and full of dirt, with cut-outs in the sides of the tires. Then he plants potatoes in every cutout so the greenery can grow outside, but leaving the root inside. This is how people get 50 pounds per tower. You could also make 8" wide bands of sheet metal; each about 4" smaller in diameter than the last; stack them and plant the roots around the edges of each level. Sort of like a round pyramid. Bottom line, no potato makes more than 1:10 ratio of seed weight vs yield weight. If you plant one pound of seed potatos, you will get only 10 lbs of tubers at BEST. The plants can only make so much, no matter how they are grown.

I've grown bintje's for the past three years, in raised beds. They are late potatoes. I dig an 8" deep trench, cover the tubers with 4" soil, when tops grow I cover with the remaining 4" of soil. I get large crops of delicious potatoes. My stored crop from 2010 is just now beginning to sprout.

Could you use a tower for non-potato plants but fill the cage with dirt? I just like how they look as planters.

@Larry Thayer: Please provide some form of citation for this amazing statement that 1 seed can only grow x in weight. Either this is not true or I planted potatoes that did not understand its limitations.

As far as the towers are concerned, I've yet to see better than 6 to 8 potatoes out of them. So far as I can ascertain this is the perfect Urban Legend - is not true, does not work - but every year some reposts.