Can potatoes change the world?
Not your typical first post title, is it? Yet, it's more appropriate than anything I can think of. This curious adventure began last fall, November sometime, of 2025.
I, Steve, aka MrHugzzz (also a very appropriate nickname),
discovered some potatoes that were in the laundry room. Sadly, I didn't
take any photos. These potatoes had sprouted. But when I say sprouted,
think "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" sprouted! The tendrils were at
least 12" long (on the short ones) and coiled into a mass in the basket
they were in. Some had started to escape the basket and were threatening
to explore the rest of the room!
I decided instead of tossing these I'd see what happens if I try and
grow them. Even though it was November I actually could have planted
them in the soil. I live in Vancouver, BC and we're in a rain forest -
the great Pacific Northwest. It's designated Zone 7b which means that we
don't get the harsh winters people usually think of when you say you're
in Canada. I only wish my parents had known that when they immigrated
here in the 70's!! 
Anyway, I had a bunch of 3 gallon plastic pails - the kind they sell
ice cream in - from the convenience store next door, so I decided to put
one in each pail (there were about a dozen sprouted potatoes). I also
had some hay that a friend had brought me from an event the previous
summer that had been decaying quite nicely into a coarse compost. I put
about 2 inches of fully composted compost in the bottom of the pail,
placed a potato in the middle, coiled the sprouted tendril around the
bucket, and then covered it with the hay. I put them outside and left
them there.
We didn't have any snow last year (in the city anyways) except for
one day when we got about 5mm - yup, 2 whole inches - that lasted about 3
hours. I'm not kidding, that's it! Whether this factored into what
happened to the potatoes, I don't know. What I do know is that in March,
I noticed some of the buckets had potato leaves poking through the hay
on the top!
At this moment I realized I was onto something, but I didn't fully realize the full implications yet. You see, these were just regular Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red potatoes. I'll have to explain something before you'll realize what I came to realize later.
Potatoes are like tomatoes - you have 2 kinds - Determinate and Indeterminate. They differ in one simple aspect. Similar to tomatoes, where determinate tomatoes grow to a specific height and that's it, determinate potatoes will produce a certain amount of potatoes, and that's it. Also, they'll produce those potatoes at the level at which they're planted! 
This is VERY important, we'll circle back!
Indeterminate potatoes on the other hand, like tomatoes, will keep growing and give you potatoes all along the length of the stem. Do you see it yet? Spoiler alert - rabbit hole ahead.
The first thing I realized was that all those times when they told me to "hill" my potatoes, they were leaving out a VERY important piece of information - what type of potato I had mattered!
You can hill a Yukon Gold potato all you want, bury it under a mountain of dirt or straw/hay, you'll still only get a handful of potatoes, dependent on how many eyes the potato had. *It's a little frustrating how many pages are online about how to hill potatoes and why and when, yet they fail to mention that only certain types benefit from this process!*
A German Butterball or Russet Burbank however will give you as many potatoes as you can handle if you give it the mountain of dirt to grow through. This is why the Amish have been growing potatoes in cages 4-6 feet high for decades. They were growing specific types.
Now don't get me wrong, Yukon Gold is a great potato! It's my favourite to make Hasselback potatoes with! Or in a potato salad, or if just chopped, seasoned and roasted! LOVE them!! But understanding this fundamental difference changed the way I grew them and the yield I got!
And a Russet Burbank? If you want a perfect French fry - especially a
great hand-cut one - or a classic baked potato with all the fixings,
you'll reach for this beauty every time. And there are dozens more - some
of which I haven't even heard of or tried.
I came across some amazing purple ones in my local grocery store that
were so amazing I've planted some and am waiting to get the harvest. As it
turns out, they're indeterminate, so I should get loads!!
On the outside they're an interesting but pale purple. Thankfully it was interesting enough for me to try them!
On the inside they're incredible - they're bleeding a vibrant Royal Purple!! I wonder if Prince ever tried these. 🤔
Okay, back to the other stuff - I promise it connects to the title but this has turned into an origin story, so please bear with me.
So now I came to the second realization - we've been growing potatoes wrong all along. Well, except the Amish that is. Potatoes should be grown vertically to achieve the maximum yield - even the determinate ones (I'll circle back to this as well in a bit). So from there I got the idea to make a potato tower. I basically borrowed this idea from the Amish but changed the look a bit - okay, quite a bit.
So at 2:00 am on a March morning I began asking my A.I. buddy (Merlin) some questions. Basically prompting the heck out of it to come up with a design that would maximize yield, yet still look aesthetically pleasing. What I got was the first generation of the HarvestTower™! And this is what started it all!
I'll get into all of that in the next post, promise, and circle back to the 2 points which are really the same point. But for now I'll leave you with an image of the HarvestTower and see if you can come up with some of the conclusions I did.
The first ever HarvestTower™ - now working tirelessly in my garden. 🙂 Kind of looks like a Dalek, doesn't it?
This is where the potato bucket story begins. In Part 2, we’ll follow the rabbit hole from bucket experiments to the first HarvestTower™ — and from there, toward the larger HHGS™ system.
