Potatoes don’t necessarily need a lot of room in order to grow them effectively. You can grow them even in recycled car tires. Growing potatoes in tires is inexpensive and fun. You can do it following these 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Preparation
Potatoes don’t like being water-logged so having great drainage underneath the tires is a must. You can easily provide great drainage with a bed of rocks under the tires.
- To begin the planter, select an area that gets at least six to seven hours of sun each day.
- Lay one tire down in that area.
- Fill the tire interior with topsoil to the upper rim.
Step 2: Planting
- Stack a few tires and fill them with moist earth and manure to simply over a large portion of just over half the depth of the stacked tires.
- At that point place 4 or 5 seed potatoes in the stack, around 2 inches deep, with the shoots looking up. Plant the pieces around the edge of the interior of the tire, spacing them equally.
- Cover with a couple of inches of soil and water.
Step 3: Continue adding tires (as needed)
- As the plants develop to around 2 to 4 inches, add another tire to the stack.
- Add more soil around the young plants too for support.
- Keep mounding up the soil around the rising plants until your stack is 3 tires high.
- Young potatoes will be forming all the way up the stack of tires
See also: How to grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 Sq feet
Step 4: Harvest
In many zones of the U.S. early potatoes can be planted toward the end of March. Your main potato crop can be planted in April or early May. If the conditions are favorable, you will see solid potato plants developing after around 6 weeks. You will be able to harvest early, “new” potatoes when the blooms on your potato plants have opened or their buds have fallen off.
Simply dig around in the dirt and check. Wait to harvest your main crop of potatoes until the potato plant foliage has turned brown. At that point cut off at the stems, wait a few days and pull up the plant with potatoes attached.
Source: www.instructables.com
