Square foot tyre gardening

[Andy Hamilton]

It looks as if the best bet for me to grow stuff will be to put 40 tyres in my back yard. I have measured it and they will fit. Might be easier than fixing up a hot bed as I was pondering with (still might). There is a tyre garage down the road to have an ask in.

I thought that perhaps the same princilples of square foot gardening might apply as the inside of each tyre is roughly 1 square foot. Although I do think I will beed more than 40 tyres, perhaps 120 if I stack them up in threes.

Has anyone tried square foot gardening.

[shiney]

Hi Andy,

I have never tried square foot gardening, but I found this site a year or so ago and kept it in my faves.

My little raised beds are really small, but we get a few bits from them and are about 2ft by 5ft.


http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/schools ... sqfoot.htm

Hope this helps!

[ina]

Wouldn't you loose a lot of space - the tyres themselves are quite bulky! Plus I wouldn't fancy looking at a yard full of tyres every time I looked out the window... Especially before the green of the plants has covered some of the black! Why don't you try a few, say along the side of the yard, and still go for a hotbed?

Ina

[Millymollymandy]

Surely you can find all sorts of interesting containers out of skips or at the recycling place that would be more attractive to look at and not take up as much bulky room as the tyres? You could still have some tyres too to make it look funky. I like the Greek way of growing geraniums in old olive oil tins.

Twosteps posted some piccies of her garden and she was growing veg in old drawers and a suitcase!

[Shirley]

hmmm growing veg in drawers - that sounds a very interesting idea...

Tyres - could they be cut in half to reduce both the space required and the quantity needed?? Not sure how easy it is to do this though.

I dare say you could grow crevice plants in between the tyres to make it look prettier - if that sort of thing bothers you.

Be interested to hear what you decide Andy.

[wulf]

If you need to cut them, a bit of glycerine on your knife will apparently make it slide through the rubber with ease. Perhaps you could cut a few holes in the exposed top edges of each tyre and plant a few trailing plants like lobelia (grows well and lasts a long time)? Also, if you group them in sets of four, you could use the gap between them for something ornamental.

Whether it's worth doing probably depends on if you can get them for free.

Wulf

[Muddypause]

You might find a lot of tyres are reinforced with a network of steel wire, which would make cutting them much more difficult.

I'm sure your local tyre depot would be delighted to give old ones to you free - they have to pay disposal costs these days. But therein may lie another problem if you ever decided to get rid of them - our local dump won't accept them any more because tyre disposal is a specialist job there days.

[gunners71uk]

I THINK BOB FLOWERDEW DID A BIT YEARS BACK ON using tyres
bob will be proud of you .

[Boots]

I'm sorry Andy, I must have missed this - and I grow in tyres.

I have a few different set ups....and they all work, so will share them.

I have sets of 3 large tractor tyres in a triangle, and then a smaller tyre in the middle of all three, with a raised pot in the centre. This actually looks quite attractive when the top pots are flowering as I tend to plant things like petunias and nasturtiums (sp?) in the top and they grow over and down. Strawberries work good too, as they jump down the tiers.

Another set up involves a circle of I think about ...mmm, 8 car tyres. They are planted out with all sorts of things...beets, aloe, sunflowers, celery etc etc, and the centre forms a large bed, which is pretty much running riot with a young tree in the centre and cannas all round it.

There is another long vegie bed that is about 15m long and it is edged with car tyres, that are added to as we go to create barrels for potatoes, and then dismantled back to one tyre height, to begin again.

The most recent one I put in stands as a retainer wall, and will also be home to taties eventually. It is 3 tyres high and probably won't be dismantled.

I then have the odd single one here and there. So, like anything... I guess it has to do with how you present them, or put them together - and what you put in them. I think they can look good, with a bit of thought, and you can get a bit funky with them... set bird baths or sculptures in the centres... that kind of thing. Create terraces and add height to something that was first a flat expanse. It's kind of arty in my eyes... I like it..but each to their own.

I think if there is some way you can actively use a large quantity of tyres productively, then go for it. They really are our worst environmental problem and so little is done in terms of reuse.

A lot of refuse places do charge for their disposal, so it is very likely you would get them delivered for free. The tyre guy would be only to happy to run them to your place if it saves a dumping fee. If you create a functional and attractive garden, there would be no need for you to have to dispose of them, would there...when you left, I mean? If you cover the whole yard like a round chess board he might complain, but if you actually designed it as an asthetic improvement and it is productive, surely it would be ok?

[woolcraft]

Hiya, For what it's worth, we have friends in Turkey and there lots of plants are grown in old cooking oil cans, approximately 12-18" square. Whole gardens are constructed of them, nobody seems to both painting them to look better, but you could. This seems to work fine for tomatoes, shallow rooted trees, vines, peppers etc. Perhaps industrial size coffee cans, etc. would be obtainable. Sue

[Andy Hamilton]

Dave pointed out that I should try and get enough earth BEFORE I get the tyres in, fair point. Having only moved in late November the compost bin is not nearly ready and it will work out as a small fortune to buy in enough compost. So how do I get enough soil to fill a tyre garden?

There must be plenty of landscape gardeners who want rid of earth I guess and perhaps that seem to be the best option.

I could be left with a garden full of tyres with nowt to put in them if not careful.

Thanks for the feedback though, I will come back to this post when I have some earth

[Shirley]

look in the local ads - ask the local farmer/gardener

we've previously had ours for free but had to either collect or transport it (the greater part of the cost) unless we've been lucky enough to have some from the local farmer.

[Andy Hamilton]

have been looking, have placed some ads too. Fingers crossed.

[Shirley]

don't forget freecycle!

[Andy Hamilton]

don't forget freecycle!

That was the first place I asked