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I’d been reading about planting potatoes in tires, and the high yields you can get when doing so. Hubby and I had been trawling craigslist to try to find old tires, but to no avail. When we happened to purchase some seed potatoes on clearance, we thought we’d better get on the ball. We called a couple of auto dismantlers (aka junkyards – but look under auto dismantler in the yellow pages).
I found out that you can get the old tires for free, because otherwise they have to pay to have them hauled away. We happened to pick a truck dismantler place.
If you live in the Sacramento area, Subway Truck Parts is a great place to go
So we got some pretty big tires. Lots of growing space!
Dutiful hubby, loading up ginormous tires
The awesome thing about growing potatoes in tires is that it’s easy to do, it saves space, and you (allegedly) get a high yield. You’ll want three tires for each stack. First tire goes on the ground, in a place of your choosing. Fill the tire with dirt.
Shovel your dirt into the tires
Next step – take out your seed potatoes. Cut the potatoes into pieces, two eyes to a piece. We skipped this step since our seed potatoes were, ahem, very obviously clearance potatoes. They may live, they may not. But this way you’ll get more potato plants. Plant them into your tire.
Clearance seed potatoes! At $0.50/bag we weren't really going to say 'no'
Next step – once your potato plants come up, a few inches high, put another tire on top and add more soil, leaving the very tops of the plants bare. As they grow higher, repeat, up until the top of the third tire.
When the plants brown and wilt, it’s time to harvest your potatoes! I’ll let you know how this works out for us.
COST: $3-5 for seed potatoes, check your local hardware store. Tires are free, and I’ll be posting about how to cut down your costs for gardening soil.
TIME INVESTMENT: 30 minutes to pick up the tires, 30 minutes to plant.
In other news, we’ve transitioned from winter into spring. Our tomato plants are going strong.
Flowering! Can't wait for fresh tomatoes
We also purchased a dwarf peach tree. For those with little space, dwarf fruit trees can be a great investment. $23 for this one.
Growing a lot of peaches for such a little tree
I’ll be back soon to post about what happened with our sake brewing – start to finish, and whether or not it’s a sustainability win or fail.
So, we had the wedding and the honeymoon, and we’re finally back! We have a lot of projects planned, so we’re excited to finally be able to stop planning a wedding and get on with things.
When I got home, the garden looked like this:
Too much tomato growing...too little support
What a nightmare! I think I’m going to try pruning the tomato plants a little bit next year. Right now we’re getting lots of tomatoes of a medium size, and the plants just went wild. Fewer tomatoes of a larger size with more manageable plants would be a good thing. I used the last of my bamboo stakes to prop things up so I could walk through here.
Phew! You can *almost* see a pathway through now...
Cucumbers were a great success as well. I built a nice little a-frame for a support. It worked really well (though could stand to be bigger), so I’ll show you how to make one of those. Took about 20 minutes. I’d also like to address flower planting. After much wheedling, I’ve convinced my hubby that planting flowers will help us attract more pollinators to our garden. We have some sunflowers, and with these, I’ve actually seen some honeybees in our yard.
This sunflower is nine feet tall and has a flower as big as your FACE. Yes, YOUR face...
This is our haul of tomatoes so far, with the two of us eating at least two tomatoes a day.
The beans in the middle are for the chili to be made tomorrow with our homegrown tomatoes and homegrown bell peppers =)
So stay tuned! We have a new set of quail eggs in the incubator, raised garden beds to build (to better feed our family), a winter garden to plant, a solar oven to construct, and much more!
P.S. Gratuituous photo of a monkey from our honeymoon trip.
Gratuituous Monkey Photo
Alas! With our wedding a mere 17 days away, I haven’t had the time to post as much as I’d like. No worries though, I have a bunch more things planned (solar cooker, mini-greenhouse, and upside-down planting, oh my!), and I’ll be back to regular posts starting the beginning of August when we get back from our honeymoon!
In the meanwhile, our suburban sustainability has begun to really pay off.
We get fresh quail eggs every day.
Fry them in a pan with a little bit of season salt...and they make amazing appetizers!
My fiance’s jalapeno plant is growing more peppers than I though possible for such a small bit of greenery. We’re contemplating how to use them all. Ideas?
He likes to surreptitiously slip these into stir fry.
This was our first zucchini. We’ve got a couple more that are almost ready, and more that will be ready in the next weeks. We chopped it up, fried it, seasoned it with soy paste, and it was DELICIOUS! Best zucchini I’ve ever had.
And our thirteen tomato plants are all growing a ton of tomatoes. I can tell we’ll be making a lot of gazpacho, tomato sauce, salads, and salsa.
These are the "Extreme Bush" variety. So far I'd recommend - very hardy, lots and lots of tomatoes, minimal staking required. Let's see how they taste!
Here’s what our garden looks like now.
Mostly tomatoes on the right, eggplants, sunflowers, squashes, and cucumbers on the left.
VEGGIE GARDEN’S DAILY TIME INVESTMENT: 2-3 minutes. We’ve set up an automatic sprinkling system with different sprinkler heads for the different plants. I just go out there to do some sporadic weeding, fertilize once every week or two, and to check what veggies are ready for picking. Easier than going to the grocery store.
In other news, my mom gave me a few hanging flower baskets. They look lovely. I water them twice a day. A couple of times while watering them, a little finch flew out of one of the baskets. “How strange,” I thought. The third time it happened, I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. I brought a chair over, and peered inside.
The bird had built a nest in there! Here I was, unknowingly watering her eggs. From that point on, I watered really carefully around the nest.
Yesterday morning, they hatched.
The lovely basket my mom gave to me.
And inside…
Tired babies!
Be back soon!
My fiance and I transplanted our tomatoes a couple of days ago, or rather “moved” them. They’re not going in the ground quite yet, but they’ve outgrown their seedling pots. Tomatoes have rather deep roots.
I bought some party cups because they’re cheap ($3.69 for 50), and about the same size as a small pot. We’re giving away most of the seedlings.
If you use party cups, cut four holes in the bottom for drainage.
Makeshift pot
As I mentioned in my planting seeds post, we couldn’t just pop the seedlings out of the plastic containers, as they so claim. We had to cut them (carefully!) down the side to remove the seedlings.
This should slide right out
Get some potting soil, put it in the cups and make a big ‘ole hole in it – more than large enough for your newly displaced seedling. Put it in the hole, and bury the seedling deep.
Should be much wider and a bit deeper
If you have more than one seedling in a pot (it’s a good idea to plant more than one seed, just in case one or more don’t come up), you’ll have to take them apart carefully. Loosen up the root ball a bit. Start at the top, where the stems are, and pry the plants apart very gently. Once the soil is loose enough, and you pull gently enough, the rest will untangle itself. Try not to break too many roots (if any). This will hinder the growth of your plant.
GENTLY!
See all the hairs on the tomato plant’s stem? Those grow into roots if you bury them. When you bury more of the stem, you allow the tomato plant to form a more stable root system. What you want to avoid is a real “leggy” tomato plant.
Should be buried deeper, but you can see all the little hairs on this one!
Tomatoes like a lot of sun, so put them in a place where they get plenty of that. If you’ve still got them indoors, put them on a tray so the water doesn’t leak all over your belongings. Planning on putting them outside? Start hardening them by putting them outside a little bit at a time, increasing time until they are acclimated to the weather. Just remember, tomatoes like it warm.
It’s been a couple days since we moved them to the cups, and they’ve definitely gotten bigger!
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE: It’s a good idea to plant more than one seed per pot, but don’t be a dummy like me and plant them right next to one another, and in the same hole. Just my luck, nearly every single seed sprouted (may I recommend Victory Seed Company?). They sprouted right next to one another – nay almost on top of one another! This made getting the seedlings apart when moving them very very difficult.
INITIAL TIME INVESTMENT: About 3-5 minutes per plant.
DAILY TIME INVESTMENT: Same as with seedlings, 2 minutes – keep ‘em watered and in the sunlight!
