Potatoes are one of the most versatile vegetables in existence and require very little in the way of space or maintenance to grow.

The prepared survivalist should include this amazing staple food as part of their basic survival food cache.

Here are some tips on growing potatoes for maximum space utilization.

Greg Lutovsky, who has been growing potatoes as a business since 1993, says you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 square feet. All it takes is some lumber, seed potatoes and careful attention to watering.

A usual method of growing potatoes is to dig a trench, plant the seed potatoes in the bottom and then shovel the dirt back in as the plant grows, covering about a third of it.

“A lot of people think you plant a potato and that the new ones grow below it, but that’s not so,” Lutovsky said. “Potatoes grow between the seed piece and the above-ground plant.”

In the trench method, the new potatoes develop in the soil that is shoveled back in.

To save space, Lutovsky recommends building a box and planting inside it, adding sides to the box as the plant grows and filling the new space with mulch or soil.

When the plant blossoms, it starts setting potatoes in this added soil. Soon after, you can start removing the bottom boards from your box and “robbing” the plant, reaching in carefully and pulling out new potatoes.

Watering at an even rate is important when growing potatoes in a box, he said, since they will dry out faster in the container than in the ground.

Your potato crop is ready to be harvested when frost kills the tops. Or, in the absence of frost, can cut off the tops yourself, wait 10 days to two weeks for the skins to firm up and then take the box apart completely, sorting the potatoes from the soil.

As you can see, you do not need a lot of space to grow potatoes. Using this strategy, four 4×4 boxes, or 64 square feet can yield somewhere around 400 pounds.

To get more tips on how to treat and plant potatoes, please visit the Seattle Times.