"Val" wrote in message
"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.

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?

Because you can grow the spuds in straw inside the tyres. Or you can use
them to make compost at the same time as growing spuds.

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.

Tyres in the garden are useful. They can be used to sling on top of plastic
to stop the wind lifting it when one needs to cover big piles of compost or
sand or horse poop or anything else. They are useful to throuw on top of
tarpaulins on trailers when one goes to the tip to stop crud flying out of
the trailer. They can be used in the chook pen to hold a nesting hen. They
ahve a hundred uses.

Of all the people I knew who tried this not a decent crop of potatoes was
harvested.

Then they didn't get it right. I've had good crops from tyres but my tyres
were all stolen by the farmer who needed them round the farm.

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.

And exactly the same thing can be done with tyres. You've explained the
theory of tyre growing very well.

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!

And you think that lifting one tyre at a time is easier than lifting a
washing basket full of spuds and soil? I very much doubt it.

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

It does. And if you haven't tried it how do you know? You did it with
washing baskets so next time try the same thing with tyres and then you will
know whether it works or not.