No matter how deep our deep-freeze is or how well stocked our pantry,
our food stockpiles are good for one thing: to keep us alive until
gardening/bartering/hunter-gathering
kicks in.
Living as we do on the high, arid plains of Wyoming, my wife and I
have been working to establish a system of gardening that requires
little water and can produce crops in the sandy, alkaline soil. After
several years and a myriad of techniques, we stumbled onto a system
that works. For lack of a better term, it's the Goodyear Garden.
Here's our tater recipe: Gather unto yourselves a few square yards
of old carpet, a couple dozen [auto or truck] tire carcasses and a
few bags of decent garden soil. Place a square of carpet on the ground
and stack
two tires
on the carpet. Fill the tires with garden soil up to about halfway
up the second tire. Plant your seed potatoes, water and wait. When
the plants are about 8 inches high, toss on another tire and add soil
to completely cover the stems. Repeat this process until you have a
stack of five or six tires.
End result at harvest time: You'll get about 25 pounds of spuds from
each tire stack. Water usage is minimal. (We water the setups three
times
a week
in
the hot,
dry,
windy climate that is taking over the West.) - Hawgtax
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