"George.com" wrote in message
...
I have been growing pottatoes in tyres for some weeks now. One stack died
off, 3 are still going and I pulled one up today expecting a crop of new
potatoes. The stack was 6 tryes high, I got a measly handful of potatos.
Bugger.

rob

Here's my take on the potatoes in tires, in the USA "tyres" are really
difficult to find, probably would have to import them from some place in
Canada

I remember this "new idea" coming forth about 30+ years ago during the start
of the recycling movement. It didn't seem like a good idea to me at the time
and still doesn't because:

If you have enough room in your garden to stack rows of ugly tires why don't
you plant the spuds in the ground? You have to stack the tires and add more
soil (from somewhere) as the potato plant grows instead of hilling it as you
would normally do. Just by the shape of the tire alone watery muck would
gather as the stack grows in the 'cup' of the tire so there goes the good
drainage theory IMO. It can't possibly be considered easier since you have
to lug those things in to stack, fill with soil as you stack and then to
harvest you have to disassemble the stack, empty each tire, watched the
neighbor banging and bouncing these things to get the soil out of the
inside, and then what do you do with the damned tires when you aren't
growing potatoes. One ugly stack of trash somewhere in the corner of the
garden for 8 months a year. Of all the people I knew who tried this not a
decent crop of potatoes was harvested.

I didn't have room in my vegetable garden for a crop of potatoes, but having
some fresh spuds IS a nice treat so I thought about the theory of the tire
thing and tweaked it a bit. I had a half dozen large, round, plastic laundry
baskets and placed them on the concrete along the edge of my driveway. I
used some damp straw I'd gathered for mulch, formed a nice even layer around
the inside wall so the soil wouldn't fall out the sides, filled the basket
1/4 with soil and planted three sections of potato in the center of each
basket and then covered with a few inches of soil and a thin layer of straw.
As the potato grew I "hilled it" with thin layers of soil covered with
another thin layer of straw and did this each week until the basket was
full. I had huge, healthy, bushy potato plants growing in each basket and
they bloomed profusely.....looked rather nice down the edge of the drive. In
the fall, after the tops had completely died down, I put my shaker box over
my wheelbarrow and dumped the basket into it. Not only did the beautiful,
black, fluffy soil fall through the wire of the shaker box, the potatoes
where on top, and I had some beautifully composted soil from all that straw
to put back in the garden and raised veggie beds. The baskets I hosed off,
dried, stacked and hung all on one big hook from the garage rafter. I got a
little over 100 pounds of potatoes from six baskets. The plants were kept
out of soggy soil so didn't rot in the ground....Seattle got a LOT of
rain...the plants grew in warm, well drained soil, produced like mad and I
composted straw all in one fell swoop! Plus dumping the baskets in my shaker
box made it an easy, no dig harvest and I no potatoes were left in the
ground. I just gently rolled the potatoes out of the shaker box on the
drive, hosed them down and let them air dry for a few days before storing.
EASY!

My little Grandma used to peel her potatoes into a piece of news paper,
bundle it up and take it to her flower garden and tucked it in where ever
she had an empty spot for planting. If you peel with a knife instead of a
vegetable peeler you have enough eye left in most of the peeling to grow.
Made a nice green filler in her flower beds and the blossoms were very
pretty as well. In the fall she'd dig them up. Not only did she get some
nice potatoes that where dug at the same time as she was "putting her garden
to bed" for the winter, she was improving the soil as well. Potatoes do
wonders for soil improvement. The volunteers that occasionally came up in
the spring where just dug the following fall.

Just my opinion but that tire thing looks like Hell, is an enormous amount
of work and doesn't work worth a darned!

Val