Tires for planting

[travis91]

Im sure this has been asked before as ive done some reading i just wanted to bounce some ideas off people on here. I have a medium sized garden and i cant till it any bigger(septic tank) i want to plant a few more melon plants and a few more tomato plants. could i just some old tires next to my garden and fill them with compost and grow plants? or do i have to worry about stuff leeching out of the tires.

[crispin]

your plan is fine.
Many many people do it.
It will work well.

[Belfrybat]

You'll find people on both sides of that fence, but there was a study done a few years ago that indicated that nothing is leached from the tired into the soil. I raise herbs in two large tractor tires and potatoes in stacks of regular tires. Haven't grown two heads or extra appendages yet.

[JuliaAnn]

I've used rear tractor tires off an old Ford 8N, and large tires from my hubby's Freightliner (18 wheeler tires) and they work just fine. I discovered that you don't really need to pack soil into the interior of the tires---just mound it up in the middle. Some soil will sort of erode down into the interior of the tires, but not a whole lot unless you get really torrential rains.

ALSO!!! Beware sitting down on the edge of the tires to rest while you lovingly tend your plants--your backside will get burned. They get HOT in the sunlight.

I've grown potatoes, squash, tomatoes and okra in them. They work just fine, and we haven't grown extra appendages either.

[frankva]

I used some 17" truck tires, stacked three high, sidewalls cut off, on a spot I dug down and amended about 12" deep. Looks ugly until things get going, but worked well.

I think the open bottom helped in my situation.

Tires were free from the place I have bought tires. Did cost me some brownies.

[The Bunny Ranch]

We did the stacking tire method for potatoes last year. Can't say I was really happy about it but it gave us something to do with the tires besides shove them behind the barn.

I think it would work fine. I'd stack about 2-3 tires for melons. I bet it would look really pretty too.


I actually think I'm going to do that this year for my cucumbers.

Those tires will get mighty hot in the Alabama sun. I'd think it would be likely to do damage to the root system.

[JuliaAnn]

We're down here in coastal Texas, and while the tires get blazingly hot, it didn't bother the roots. But then again, I didn't pack the soil into the interor walls of the tires either, so maybe that kept the heat from the hot tires from transferring to the soil?

And I didn't stack them either---just one tire laid on the bare ground, with soil mounded up in the middle of the tire, and as mentioned, NOT packed into the interior walls of the tires. They were plenty deep for even potatoes.

[Tad]

I was thinking of doing the same thing and I have a silly idea but if you sray paint the outside white would that keep them from getting too hot down south?

[iwannabeafarmer]

you could also do something like this



I think this is at Disney World

[Belfrybat]

Originally Posted by Tad

I was thinking of doing the same thing and I have a silly idea but if you sray paint the outside white would that keep them from getting too hot down south?

That is what was recommended to me. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. Basil just loved the tractor tire I used -- I think the heat helped it.

[Our Little Farm]

For those of you that use tires for potatoes, how many tires do you stack and what kind of crop did you get?

[The Bunny Ranch]

I had to stack 2 tires and I only got 9 potatoes. It was only a test to see if it was better than mounding. Some people swear by the stacking tire method but it was a flop for me.

[geo in mi]

Originally Posted by travis91

Im sure this has been asked before as ive done some reading i just wanted to bounce some ideas off people on here. I have a medium sized garden and i cant till it any bigger(septic tank) i want to plant a few more melon plants and a few more tomato plants. could i just some old tires next to my garden and fill them with compost and grow plants? or do i have to worry about stuff leeching out of the tires.

If you don't mind spending some money--why not get three bales of straw, lay them down in a triangle to get about the same square footage. Then, at the end of the season, you have something compostable, or some biomass to add to your soil. You could also carve out a section in each bale, add compost and grow something there as well. Flowers, annual herbs, etc......

geo

[Belfrybat]

I use 3 tires stacked for potatoes. Start out with one with the potato seed on the ground and 4" of compost/ sand over them. When the stems get to the top of the tire, fill in with rotted leaves, hay, compost. Put on second tire, fill it up gradually and then the third. Some years I really get a bumper harvest and others years not so good. Depends on how quickly it heats up. But harvesting is a dream -- just pull off the top tire, pull out potatoes, do the second layer and finally the last. Transfer the resulting half-done compost to the compost pile to finish out. It's been years since I grew potatoes in the ground, so I can't remember the comparisons. I do know that growing potatoes in tires took a lot less room and work for the same amount of harvest.