Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You can use car tyres also ... Tater Tyres?

Do you need to put any holes in the bags for drainage, or are there already enough holes in the hessian bags for drainage? Is drainage even nessasary? Do you water with your fish water? Have you had Monsanto henchmen at your door making sure you are not growing their patented frankenpototoes? If growing potatoes is so easy why am I not doing it right now? What am I doing right now? Who am I?

Ahhh neat thread. The first I herd of the idea my wifes aunt had thrown out some spuds in the yard where she was dumping her grass clippings. First thing you know she had spuds growing and she did not really think about it much till the plants died and a while later she moved the pile and it was full of spuds..... Then she did it on purpose cause she is old enough that she did not want to dig gardens any more. Got lots of spuds when she did it on purpose.

This is something I decided to do so I just laid the spuds with sprouts pointed up and covered them up with mulch. I am going to cover them with more mulch as they grow. I soak the mulch pile every day when I water the rest of the garden. Seems to be working ok.

You are right, potatoes are one of the easiest and largest yielding crops per cubic unit of soil. If you are not growing them right now you should be taking a hard look at yourself

No I didnt put holes in, no I did not use fish water...not that I remember... And yes water is necessary

Nice going don. Yeah, I hear alot if people don't even hill up using soil, just a sparse soil hay mix.... Or just hay/mulch. This is another money saving advantage of potatoes.

Okay, proper update.

My potatoes are nearly ready to hill up. Could probably do one bag now, but will wait till the other catches up.

I also bought a kg of royal blue seed potatoes from the B and 4 more grow bags from stratco for $3 each. They say "herb" bags on them, but are nice and deep for growing potatoes.

I've also attached a pic of what the sprouted potatoes should look like before planting for all those who asked.

Pic

Pic

I harvested a couple of potatoes today but Im too embarrassed to post pics...

They need a bit longer me thinks.

Something that's on my to-do list, but I was going to cut the rims out so they are lower profile first..

Is that what you've done with those? Does it make much difference?

I haven't grown them in the car tires but I believe u don't need to cut the tire . I THINK that the potatoes just sit in the rim of the rubber , if my memory serves me correctly ...

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There is an interesting documentary called The Botany of Desire that talks about the history of the potatoe. Northern Europe would never have risen to prominence without it. It was the first crop that could provide the calories needed for population growth in northern Europe. In the Mediterranean wheat was what supplied the calories, but it did not grow so well in northern Europe, so the population stayed within the means of what wheat could support. With the introduction of the potatoe the population grew, and the balance of power shifted from the Mediterranean to northern Europe. Not bad for a little tuber from Peru.

You definitely need to let the spuds sprout before you plant them. I planted some with just eyes showing and they did not produce plants. They are still just lying in the mulch not doing anything. the ones that had shoots are doing really well.

There is a good spud thread on the backyard farming forum here:

http://backyardfarming.com.au/phpbbb/vi ... s&start=60

From my very limited experience, mulching or hilling up with straw does not increase yield, you need something heavier like dirt, mulch, lawn clippings or a combination. Here are my spuds for this year, I used the trench and hill method.

I wish I had hat type of room to grow things.