If you haven't been following along, the tire tower started with a little fewer (but bigger) starter potatoes than the wooden tower, but because several plants were growing much faster than others, when I added the third tire, I buried too much of half the plants, and by the time we put the fourth tire on, only one plant remained.
Lesson learned I suppose. As #3 and #4 dug through mounds of beautiful worm-composted soil, the top tire revealed three small potatoes. They spent the next hour or two digging through the bottom three tires only to realize those three potatoes were the entire harvest.
Let that sink in... Roughly 1/3 of the original seed potatoes (by weight), one full season, four tires... Three potatoes.
In other garden news, I've joined another group trade in one of the Facebook groups I'm in. I'll be sending in 75 packets of seeds with the hope that I will get something new or different. I'm also participating in four one-on-one trades that will be handled by the same group (to save postage)... Those seeds should return sometime in mid-December.
I've also gone on a small seed buying binge on eBay picking up a couple cheap seeds that caught my eye. I will be adding them to the Seed Stash page when they arrive.
After much thought, and a little coaxing, I have decided this year to really do more with winter sowing and trying to get some perennial food plants started, including possibly starting apple trees, blueberry bushes, raspberry and blackberry canes, and plum trees in addition to possibly starting rhubarb and hostas from seed with the potential to sell what we grow. This, of course, will be in addition to all of our normal winter sowing garden goodies (tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and okra and squash and so on). The best part is that the perennials typically need stratification (a few weeks to months of cold in order to "activate" the seeds into germinating) so winter sowing is absolutely perfect for them!