Tag Archives: potatoes

Tire(d) Potatoes

What do you do with a few old tires that aren’t fit for the road anymore? Grow potatoes in them! It works great if you have limited space and a decent number of excess rubber hoops.

Here’s a website with step-by-step instructions… Instructables.

The location we chose didn’t get as much sun as we hoped for but it was along the fence. No compost or damp earth. We started with two stacks of two tires each, added some leaves that we had used to cover other tender plants with over the winter. We added about 4 potatoes to each and pushed them down in so they were covered.

After that, if they got watered it was from the rain. We did add some potting soil to each stack later on when the leaves had compacted.

We didn’t spend extra money on seed potatoes, just planted ones we had bought that had sprouted eyes and gone soft and wrinkly… bleurgh… at least no fingers pushed their way through. That would have been beyond disgusting.

So how did our tire(d) potatoes do? Well considering the neglect and the fact it was just an experiment, better than we expected. And yes, we did plant a red potato and later than the other ones and it did the best of all, even though we only got one spud off that plant.

potatoes

As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Will we try it again? You betcha! And now that we know it really does work, we’ll maintain them and hopefully get a bumper crop for next year.

And another bonus of growing the potatoes in tires – the dog stayed away and didn’t stomp on the them. Might have peed on the tires but that’s another story.