Comments on: Growing Potatoes in Tires

By: Growing Potatoes: Repeated Hilling is Dumb « Urban Hayseed

Growing Potatoes: Repeated Hilling is Dumb « Urban Hayseed — Sun, 08 May 2011 05:00:09 +0000

[...] is Dumb By Rian, on May 7th, 2011 One of my most popular posts, to this day, is this one about Growing Potatoes in Tires. That was three years ago now. I thought it might be worth revisiting this whole thing. My [...]

By: brooklyn grower

brooklyn grower — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:01:32 +0000

I’ve been doing some research as well to find out if tires are a safe medium for growing food. And while I share your skepticism about possibly consuming chemicals or heavy metals, I think that finding a way to make tires safe for growing is MORE than “worth it”… and I keep hoping I will find a way to make it totally safe. I think that as food growers, it should be part of our consciousness to seek out ways to tap into our vast waste stream in this country and utilize those things for positive and productive means! Think about how many tires could avoid the landfill if we could stack half a dozen in every backyard and produce a family’s worth of potatoes! Good for family bellies, but also good for the environment! It IS worth it to at least try to find ways to utilize waste for growing food.
Good luck!

By: Durgan

Durgan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:06:54 +0000

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?ZELNG 21 August 2009 How a Potato Plant Grows
Potato growing test box was opened today. The pictures literally speak for themselves. Clearly there is no advantage in carrying out excessive hilling when growing potatoes. The purpose of hilling is to insure the tubers are covered. For comparison one Pontiac Red was dug in the same row, which was almost identical to the test box potato in appearance.

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?PotatoS Summary: Potato Test Box

By: Rian

Rian — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:47:59 +0000

Hi again Karen,

I didn’t accurately reflect in there how much research I actually did on the subject. To be fair, if it concluded anything, it was that the leaching wasn’t significant enough to talk about in that context.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I avoid treated wood and what-not even though they’re “supposed to be safe.” I’d rather not find out later that there was, in fact, traces of who-knows-what in there.

As for the Wiggly podcast team… I don’t know… I’m afraid, after #133, that I might offend Farmer Phil, and he’ll fly over here and headbutt me.

Rian

By: karen

karen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:31:58 +0000

A very interesting post. I have often wondered about the safety of using old tyres, but having never used them didn’t think about exactly what might be leaching out of them. Perhaps the Wiggly Podcast team will have to come up with a greener alternative. Perhaps you should e-mail them with your findings and get a bit of feedback.

Karen, Wiggly Wigglers