Results are discouraging, but not a total failure... and I learned some lessons that will be helpful in the future, plus gained a small pile of fingerlings to eat!
When I started the Great Potato Experiment, I had no room to plant fingerlings, so I planted them in tires. Two things I did wrong: One, I put the tires over weed-cloth because the area was just grass. Secondly, I used straw and grass clippings, no dirt.
The weed-cloth prevented any roots from penetrating deeply in a search for water, and the fill material of straw and grass clippings did not hold enough water to create a growing medium.
When the plants died off and I dug the fingerlings (Rose Finn Apple Fingerlings) I found 50 or more small tubers the size of a nickel. I think if they had been in a better growing medium, they would have grown larger and the experiment would have been a success, even with the weed-cloth. The original tubers I planted were still intact, and had not decomposed much to make roots for new tubers to grow.
Mushroom compost would be a good medium to throw in the bottom on top of the weedcloth.
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