Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Juanita Reid" <goatrock@earthlink.net>]

Rebecca, sorry your experience with growing potatoes in tires turned out
badly.  I have raised potatoes in ties in Washington state as well as
Arkansas and while Washington is cool and rainy it made good (big) potatoes
and lots of them all the way up to the top of the 4 tires used.  In
Arkansas, the experiment was also very positive and very large potatoes
were grown in the tires.  I think one of the things that made this a
success was we used soil rather than the hay or straw.  We did add grass
clipping once in a while along with the soil.  

I have grown potatoes in Minnesota by throwing seed potatoes on
un-disturbed earth and covering them with horse bedding hay from my
neighbors farm.  That made good potatoes also.  I just had to keep adding
horse bedding hay as a weed would appear.  I just lifted the hay back over
the weed(s) and the potato bed was kept weed free.  I did not use the hay
with manure -- the manure was removed since I had read that fresh manure
would cause scab on potatoes.  The manure was needed for my very active
compost pile.

Juanita Reid
goatrock@earthlink.net



> [Original Message]
> From: Rebecca Terrill <murien@earthlink.net>
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
<livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: 10/6/2006 9:21:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Potatoes in tires
>
> Thought I would share our experience with the potato/tire method, which
was
> not too successful I am afraid. In my opinion I believe that our hot,
humid
> summer and the sporadic heavy rains did us in. We dug the soil beneath 10
> tires, planting the seed potatoes in the soil and then stacked another
tire
> over the site. As the potatoes emerged, we mulched with hay and kept
adding
> tires as the plants grew. We began to notice in July, when the stacks had
> reached the fifth tire in height, that the heat and moisture in the tire
> stacks began to increase and the plants began to rot. When we dismantled
the
> stacks we found, in the three stackes where the plants survived, that
only a
> few small potates had formed at the soil level and no higher. 
>
> If you live in an area of high humidity I would suggest that wire columns
> might serve you better, vice the heat and moisture retaining black tires. 
>
> That was our experience, anyway .....
>
> Rebecca
> Zone 7, VA    
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:livingontheland-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Greg Bell
> Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 8:56 PM
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [Livingontheland] Potatoes in tires
>
>
> i'm planning on growing potatoes in car tires this year.  free containers 
> for container gardening!  sort of a white-trash look, but it allows me to 
> stack more tires on top and fill with leaf litter and compost as the 
> potatoes grow.
>
> basic question - these are average sized car tires... how many seed 
> potatoes can i/should i plant in one tire?  spacing recommendations on
the 
> package are obviously geared towards machine-based growing.
>
> thanks,
> ~gb
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