Growing potatoes in tyres
If there isn’t enough available space within your garden, you can still grow a respectable crop of spuds, and do a little recycling at the same time. Potatoes grow in the warm environment of a soil filled tyre.
Four tyres, two pounds of seed potatoes and good soil will provide you 20-30 pounds of winter potatoes.
First of all pick a spot where you can put your tires which is out of the way and preferably out of sight.
Loosen the surface of the soil just enough to allow for drainage, and set your largest tyre in place.
Fill the inside of the tyre casing loosely with good topsoil, and then set 3-4 potato seeds into the soil. Use sticks or rocks to keep the casing rings spread open.
Add enough soil to the tyre “hole” to bring it to the same level as the soil inside the tyre.
When the new potato plants are eight inches tall, add another tyre and soil to the stack, as in the first level.
Repeat the process for your third, and if desired, fourth tyres.
As you add tyres and soil to the stack, the 8″ of the potato plant stalk is covered with soil.
By doing this, the existing stalk essentially reverts to a root status and the plant is forced to grow upward to once again find the sunlight which it needs.
By raising the soil level this way (in 8″ increments) the potato plant is able to continue growing without suffocation, and at the same time you are creating a 24-30″ tap root from which many more lateral roots can develop.
Each lateral root can then produce additional potatoes (at 3-4 levels rather than the normal single layer).
When you water, be sure that the soil is thoroughly moistened all the way to the base of the pile.
The tyres act as an insulator and heat “sink” for your potatoes.
This added warmth will cause the lateral roots (where the new potatoes form) to multiply more rapidly, thereby giving you more potatoes.
When you need fresh potatoes next fall and winter, harvest the crop from the top tyre, and remove it from the pile.
If you need more potatoes just take more tyres.
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[...] The tires act as an insulator and heat “sink” for your potatoes. This added warmth will cause the lateral roots (where the new potatoes form) to multiply more rapidly, thereby giving you more potatoes. [...]
March 27th, 2011 at 7:28 am
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