Tire Gardening

We have TERRIBLE soil in West Tennessee - hard, dry and not very hospitable to growing your garden veggies without a lot of prep work. Because of this, many people have turned to raised bed gardening or square foot gardening. These methods are great, but there can be quite an expense involved if you decide to make your raised beds out of wood (which will eventually rot) or out of concrete block / stone.

This year we are going to embark on a new technique - Tire Gardening. Similar to container gardening, but hospitable to a greater variety of vegetable plants because you can increase the depth of your tire garden spot just by adding an additional tire. This method is also great for those who have little gardening space, because you can tire garden on your patio if you want - no large expanses of yard are required.

This method involves no digging, is weed resistant, bug resistant, holds heat, is easy to water and employs the methods of square foot gardening that we are very familiar with.

Not to mention, used tires by the truckload are usually available free of charge - the tire change businesses actually have to PAY to have the used tires removed. Most places now even charge a tire disposal fee for discarding your old tires whenever you buy new ones.

We are getting our first tires this weekend and will get them in place so that we can put out our potato plants next week. We'll keep you updated here along the way - sharing our triumphs and any failures.

In the meantime, here are some great places you can look to read more about this method of gardening:

Backwoods Home: A New Use For Old Tires

How To Recycle Old Tires Into Garden Planters - you can use your tires as they are when you receive them, or you can turn them into works of art. This site even has links for many more things you can make with recycled tires.

Here are some FLICKR photos of tire gardening you might want to review: Tire Gardening Photos

Let me know what you think! Are you going to try this? Have you gardened using tires before? Share your thoughts - we'd love to know how it has worked for you.