Potatoes

I hate taking old tires to the landfill, so I decided to try to find another use for the set I had to replace this spring.  I settled on trying to grow potatoes in a tire tower.

So this spring I set 2 tires up and filled them full of soil and planted some potatoes.  After a couple of weeks, the plants were looking really nice so I added a 2nd tire and filled it full of straw.  And a few weeks later I added a 3rd tire and more straw.

The potatoes are supposed to grow in the straw and be easy to harvest.

So today, I took the towers apart.  There were no potatoes growing the straw, though I had a few growing in the dirt.

I'm not sure what went wrong.  Though I think the lack of sunshine and all the torrential rain we had this summer was partly to blame.  I'm also not sure if I packed the straw in tight enough.  I know the potatoes need to develop in the dark, no sunshine allowed.  And the dirt was really wet.  I have a lot of clay in my soil here.  So even though I mixed in a lot of potting soil, I think next year I need to add some sand.

Anyway, the few potatoes I got were pretty good.  I cooked most of them with a roast chicken tonight for dinner :-).

My potato plants are looking pretty ragged after all the rain the past 2 weeks.

2 tires and the straw removed.

A few nice looking potatoes.