Last spring, I decided to try to grow potatoes in a different way than usual. I called it the potato project. That's a picture of the total harvest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well I only need one word: Dismal. I ended up putting on three tires, covering up the plants just so the tips, about 4 - 5 inches showed. Everything looked great. Then a week or so ago, I noticed one of the plants just wilted and died. Ominous. So I took it out and while I was all mucky anyway, decided to dig around in the dirt and see if I could feel any potatoes. I dug two tires deep, nary a tater; nada, zilch, zero, none. I started thinking this wasn't going to work out as well as hoped. A couple of days later, another plant just withered and died. OK, there's something going on. I figured I might as well pull up the plants and gather whatever potatoes there were.
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The measly amount of potatoes I found were in the bottom tire only and they were all red potatoes. Nothing in the other two. Soooo the theory needs a little work or I did something wrong. I'm guessing I did something wrong. I did plant late and I did over crowd. Maybe that had something to do with it. I think I'd like to try again because the plants were safe from the dreaded potato bug. I'm thinking may-be I'll just use two tires stacked to start and see if they'll do better. On the upside, the potatoes did taste great.
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