Growing Potatoes in Tyres

Sunday 7 February 2010

If you listened to gardeners question time this week you might have heard a nice lady, Mrs Elizabeth Gladman talking about her experiences growing potatoes in tyre stacks. She had pretty dismal results. Not surprising as, under her husbands advice, she had set the potatoes growing in straw - not the best growing medium Bob Flowerdew noted.

Bob did go onto to say that she could get bumper crops out of tyres stacks if done right. Glad to hear it as our entire potato crop will be grown in tyre stacks next to the shed. The benefit of using tyres as far as I can see are:

1) Rubber is highly insulating and will protect the tubers from late frosts, uinlike those plastic (over-priced) containers being sold in the shops. This means we can start the earlies very early.
2) The stacking nature means we can add height easily to allow us to earth-up around the haulms (the green tops).
3) The volume of soil you can get into three tyres stacked up is enormous - this scale makes it easier to keep the containers from drying out when your not around for a few days.
4) This is super-recycling - no energy, except man power, is required to convert them into useful garden hardware.

We've been collecting tyres for the last few weeks from the garage around the corner - picking through the industrial garbage whilst the neighbours look on, wondering whether they should call the police. We have eight so far and need another four for to complete the arrangement:

3x stacks of three tyres for the potatoes - two for Charlotte, one for Foremost
3x single tyres for lettuce (these will sit infront of the potatoes to break-up the rubber wall affect)

Taking advatage of the fine weather this morning we set about removing the rims from the tyres. This was done by steadily scoring through the rim with a Stanley Knife, before moving onto a hacksaw. The best way to do this is to give yourself a flatish surface to saw through by bending the rim towards you as you cut - see first photo.

Biggest sign of progress this week - the raised bed was in 'full sun' for about an hour this afternoon. That's the first time in two months. As you can see by this photo taken from the drawing room it was weak, but sunlight none the less.