09-04-2008, 04:46 PM
FITZ, very used tires are great for building raised beds & retaining walls on the quick. BUT you have to be OK with having used tires in your yard. I'm told that old tires have already had enough heat cycles to prevent off-gassing of toxins. There's always the threat of a nasty mess if you have a fire on your lot
I switched to raised tire beds 6 years ago & consistently see larger, healthier yield. My water consumption also went down because the lower lip of the tires store a bit of water. So you water less & it forces the roots to go deep in search of the deeper water source. win win.
Another upshot is that the tires are free & very easy to build with. You can stack & terrace with ease and get height quickly. On hillsides, peg them in place with rebar. My last tire bed was in the lowest spot of my yard...the first run of tires got me 8" off the ground pronto & kept the garden high & dry when a 6" deep pond developed in the dead of winter! Here, I'd throw 6" of cinder or lava rocks in the bottom tire to ensure good drainage.
I built a small 3-tire-high bed down at Kapohocat's when I lived there. It looked pretty redneck until I realized that I could 'lean' lava rock against the tires instead of tediously locking lava rock in place on its own. After 45 minutes of stacking it miraculously looked like a lava rock bed instead of a tire pile! We used the tires as compost bins for a few weeks, then threw on a bit of soil after stuff decomposed. They've got choke basil in there now.
The only downside I've found (besides them being tires) is removing them. Say you move & don't want to leave 'industrial waste' for the new owner. It's a pain in the rump to get the dirt out & cut through the root systems that develop. The two times I've removed my tire gardens it has rained - some sort of crappy gardener rain dance I guess! Tires full of mud & roots is no fun.
Sorry if i'm telling ya stuff you already know, but it's one of the best gardening tips I've received in 18 years of gardening [
]
I switched to raised tire beds 6 years ago & consistently see larger, healthier yield. My water consumption also went down because the lower lip of the tires store a bit of water. So you water less & it forces the roots to go deep in search of the deeper water source. win win.
Another upshot is that the tires are free & very easy to build with. You can stack & terrace with ease and get height quickly. On hillsides, peg them in place with rebar. My last tire bed was in the lowest spot of my yard...the first run of tires got me 8" off the ground pronto & kept the garden high & dry when a 6" deep pond developed in the dead of winter! Here, I'd throw 6" of cinder or lava rocks in the bottom tire to ensure good drainage.
I built a small 3-tire-high bed down at Kapohocat's when I lived there. It looked pretty redneck until I realized that I could 'lean' lava rock against the tires instead of tediously locking lava rock in place on its own. After 45 minutes of stacking it miraculously looked like a lava rock bed instead of a tire pile! We used the tires as compost bins for a few weeks, then threw on a bit of soil after stuff decomposed. They've got choke basil in there now.
The only downside I've found (besides them being tires) is removing them. Say you move & don't want to leave 'industrial waste' for the new owner. It's a pain in the rump to get the dirt out & cut through the root systems that develop. The two times I've removed my tire gardens it has rained - some sort of crappy gardener rain dance I guess! Tires full of mud & roots is no fun.
Sorry if i'm telling ya stuff you already know, but it's one of the best gardening tips I've received in 18 years of gardening [
]
* I'd rather fail at happiness than succeed at misery *