What a disappointment! Everything appeared to be going well but the truth was in the harvesting.
Let's step back to the beginning of the tale. Back in April when the garden was being planted, I started six potato tire gardens. Tire gardens? Yes, tire gardens. No, not growing tires, silly! using tires to grow potatoes. The idea is simple, really. Plant potato starts in the first tire and as the potato plants reach 8 inches tall, add another tire and bury all but the tips in straw, and repeat until you have four or five tires stacked one atop the other. The potato plants are supposed to produce tubers all the way up. What one is supposed to find when harvesting is an abundance of tubers -- spuds -- in the tires.
This morning, BJ and I found that two of the tires had wilted potato plants. Sooo, we decided to see how many spuds we had in those two towers. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. An utter and complete failure! Why? Well, I have no clue. Well, actually, there is one clue. Ants. Lots of ants. Could the ants have eaten my spuds? Possible. Not sure if that is the complete answer but it is clear they were having themselves a good spud time.
I hope to find out what else could have gone wrong so I can be more successful next time. I like the idea of planting potatoes this way because it takes less space to grow a large number of spuds...well at least that is the theory! We just aren't quite there yet with this method!
I'm sorry your potatoes didn't do better. :( I am starting a vegetable garden this year for the first time. I refuse to get my hopes up. lol!!!! I figure if I am lucky, I will get to eat something out of it.
ReplyDeleteI like the tire idea...I tried trash cans this year for the first time as I have a bad back; thought just tipping them over would be easy. Only 3 little plants have shown their heads so far...so here's hoping those plants provide A LOT OF taters!!!! Ha!
ReplyDeleteThe lack of potatoes might have been due to chemicals leaching out of the rubber, or your ants. Did you plant potatoes that had already sprouted?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments everyone! Yes, the potatoes were sprouted when I planted them. Planting in tires is considered organic as the rubber does not leach chemicals. That is, though, a point of controversy. I suspect that the culprit were the ants and beetles. Hopefully, my Fall crop will do better.
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