I have finally completed the experiment. The potato tires were the last to be harvested and I am ready to give a review of the various methods I used. I did not do a lot of the container methods as I am terrible at remembering to water and we live in an arid region. I did not think they’d survive my climate and neglect in a container.
The first method I used was simply placing the potatoes on top of the soil of a raised bed and covering them with straw. Super simple. Good yields. Easy to harvest as well since they did not go very deep in the soil. My only issue with this was that the poultry liked to dig them up.
Potato tower being planted.
The second method was a potato tower made of tires. I only had it 2 tires high and perhaps I waited too long to put the second tire on. There were no potatoes in the second tire. Yields were less with this method than with the straw method. Also, it was dangerous. While I know the spiders were doing me a great service by eating pests I had quite a fright when I flipped the first tire and found a black widow living between the 2 tires. I found quite a few in my harvest. I won’t do this method again. It’s too labor intensive, yields were not great and it’s a risk to my health.
The third was perhaps the laziest method of them all since I never watered them, ever. I simply buried the seed potatoes in the berms. They did grow. They even produced a few seeds. However, I believe most of them to have been eaten by ground animals. That’s ok by me. Rather they eat the potatoes than my tree roots.