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Old 01-03-2007, 03:55 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
La Puce La Puce is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2006
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Default Growing Potatoes in Straw

On 1 Mar, 12:47, wrote:
I have also read about growing potatoes in boxes/tyres.


Boxes, sacs and any form of containers yes, but not tyres. Tyres have
chemicals which are toxic to plants (and to you if you are eating it)
- if it's flowers, which I do grow in go-kart tyres, then it's ok,
unless your plant is suseptible to the chemicals in the tyres. But
food stuff is not advisable. Tyres leachates can kill entire aquatic
communities of algae, zooplankton, snails (perhaps a good point there)
and fish, but also seaweeds and phytophlankton.

A tyre contains aluminum, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, magnesium,
manganese, molybdenum, selenium, sulfur, and zinc. They've tried to
recycle tyres in landscaping but found that it was very flamable and
plants have been shown to accumulate abnormally high levels of zinc
sometimes to the point of death.

So I wouldn't use tyres to grow my potatoes in ;o)