What do you do when you've run out of raised bed space for your potatoes? Plant them in car tyres of course!
Disposal of car tyres is a real problem in the UK where we produce 50 million tyres to be disposed of each year. According to the Used Tyre Working Group's 2001 survey, 22% were recycled, 8.3% went to energy recovery, 9.9% were retreaded, 16% were reused and 3.3% were used in landfill engineering. The remainder (approximately 40%) will have been landfilled, stockpiled or illegally disposed of.
In the College garden we are doing our bit to help cut these figures by using them as free planters for our potatoes.
To make your own tower of potatoes simply…
- Fork over the soil where you want the tyre to go.
- Put the tyre on top and fill with soil, making sure to get soil right inside the tyre walls so as not to leave any air space.
- Put your potatoes on top of the soil – 3 or 4 for early varieties, 1 or 2 for maincrop.
- Put another tyre on top and fill until the potatoes are buried under a good 15-20cm of soil (again making sure to fill the tyre walls).
- When the first shoots come through you will need to ‘earth’ the potatoes up to stop the tubers growing near the surface where they will turn green and poisonous. Wait until the shoots are 10cm or so above the soil and then cover them over with soil or compost.
- Do this a further 3 or 4 times, adding a third tyre where necessary.
Remember to water well throughout the growing season (as you would any pot plant) and when it’s time to harvest, simply lift off the tyres and shake out the potatoes!
NOTE – if you plan to do this in successive years you will need new soil each time, but you can use the soil from the tyres for crops other than potatoes (and tomatoes since they are in the same family and so subject to the same viruses).
Stumble upon Digg
this del.icio.us
Read other articles in
The College Garden