Comments on: Ocean’s Three

By: An English country garden at All that comes with it

An English country garden at All that comes with it — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:30:33 +0000

[...] I first wrote about planting our potatoes in old car tyres Kerry’s friend Katherine left a comment saying [...]

By: The Napoleon of crime at All that comes with it

The Napoleon of crime at All that comes with it — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:15:20 +0000

[...] course I blame myself for introducing him to crime at an early age. I had envisaged him using his nefarious talents in order to add to the family [...]

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:18:22 +0000

Yes we spent a fortune on paint as well, far more than the potatoes would have cost. However we noticed this weekend that some potato sprouts have come up! Hurrah! I think to be really posh you should not use all the tires initially and then "earth up" as the potato plant's come up. And I quote Once the new potato plants get to be about eight inches tall, add another tire and add soil around the plants until just a couple of inches of the tops are above the soil. Repeat this process for the third and subsequent tires. As you add tires and soil to the â€˜tater stack, the plant stalk is covered with soil. As you do this, the existing stalk will send off roots as well as grow upward to once again find the sunlight it needs. Since you are gradually raising the soil level eight inches or so at a time, the plant is able to keep growing without suffocating. At the same time, you are creating a 24- to 36-inch tap root off of which many lateral roots will develop. Each of the lateral roots can produce additional potatoes at three or four levels instead of only one. When you water the plant, be sure that the soil is thoroughly moistened all the way down to the base of the pile.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:08:14 +0000

I appreciate that there has been somewhat of a delay in my response to this entry, but inspired by your “recycling” effort Matt and I had a week off work last week and having read your inspiring tale of tyres and potatoes I decided that we too should grow potatoes in this fashion. We have previously tried the bin bag method and the growing in the vege plot method and received very disappointing results. Thanks to you we now have 12 tyres in our garden painted pink and purple in my stacks (one is a form of girly camouflage of left over pink and purple paint) and then the manly tones of red and white and god and rock effect spray for Matt’s stack.

Given the amount of money we ended up spending on spray and paint I think it would have been cheaper to buy the potatoes from Sainsburys!!! Also I now have a slight following at the local tip where we acquired our tyres from. Two trips there asking if a could possibly have six tyres each time seems to have attracted the wrong sort of attention, but I’ll take it anyway!!! I will have to send Kerry pictures to show the works of art that we have created.

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:35:13 +0000

My father in law and I did a heist like that on old pallets in order to build a dog shelter/kennel. Which proved to be extraordinarily heavy when half complete (in fact it remained that way because I never finished it). So it’s a good idea to introduce your young to crime early on so they are never without pallets and tires!

By: (un)relaxeddad

(un)relaxeddad — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:33:45 +0000

It almost looks attractive! Dudelet’s biggest larceny to date has been half-inching single sweets from the bins at Woolworths – which being as they put them at floorlevel does make me think of honey traps. I do tell him “NO!” but caught him actually trying to check that I wasn’t looking the other day. And he’s only three. Supermum’s probably been letting him get away with it…

By: whit

whit — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 14:03:39 +0000

I think Amy picked out a great color scheme. The previous owner will never notice them hiding in plain sight like that.

By: Kerry

Kerry — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 22:49:38 +0000

I prefer to think of it as recycling, although I hope no-one from work reads this as we might have to get a waste transfer licence at this rate.

By: L.A. Daddy

L.A. Daddy — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:52:07 +0000

Hmm. You never know. What goes around comes around, I always say. But such mundane items, I’m sure your payback will be very mild. Good luck. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.