Ok, do you remember when I decided to try planting potatoes in a tyre on top on concrete? With newspaper on the bottom & just some compost...
Well, finally the plants have died off, so I decided to do a treasure hunt on the weekend to see what I could find. To be honest, I wasn't actually expecting a lot. I was beginning to think that the potatoes were all rotten as well because it has been so hot here, so you can imagine my excitement when I came across all of these little beauties!
Well, finally the plants have died off, so I decided to do a treasure hunt on the weekend to see what I could find. To be honest, I wasn't actually expecting a lot. I was beginning to think that the potatoes were all rotten as well because it has been so hot here, so you can imagine my excitement when I came across all of these little beauties!
This was just one tyre's worth of potatoes, I left the other tyre for the boys to do their own treasure hunt (much to their glee!). So all in all we were left with double this amount of potatoes, by only planting 10 seed potatoes in 4 tyres on top of concrete. We neglected it for the 4 months that passed, and were well rewarded. The taste is quite different to the bought ones - better, sweeter, tastier, more solid. We were eating by the bucket load.
Do the math and you'll see that it really is worth planting your own potatoes, even if you live in the inner city like I do! (you just might want to plant more if you have a bunch of hungry kids like I do ...)
I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have read that growing potatoes in old tyres is a bad idea as the tyres contain lead and the little potatoes are like sponges and soak all the nasty lead up... sorry
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback Anonymous (I love it when people leave their name!) I am sorry to hear about this and will have to do some more research on it. Thanks for letting me know, Meg
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