Last year, I fell into a large pile of used tires that I have plans to build with. While last years garden was marginally successful. I was able to harvest green beans, snap peas, green peppers, tomatoes, and a few other things. I found that the soil was full of clay and rocks and made it very difficult for my vegetables to grow as well as finding it very difficult to keep up with the weeds. This year, I have decided to recycle in excess of 65 tires in order to build a defined and raised individual vegetable garden.
Since I was replacing the garden I made last year, the first step in the process was to remove and clear the old garden. This included all of the fencing, the posts, the logs used create the beds and trellises. In addition, I had to turn over all of the soil from last years garden and attempt to dig down even further to make a better slope for the tires. In order to accomplish this, I used my 1952 Ford 8N tractor with a rear scraper blade.
We built this garden in sections, which included about 20+ tires per section. In order to relocate all of these tires from behind the barn to the garden area we used the International Harvester 184 Lo-Boy tractor with John Deer dump trailer. I was able to transport 5-6 tires at a time and each round trip only took 3 minutes. The pick axe was the next tool to be used in order to create level platforms for the tires to be placed. However, before we did that we laid the tires out in the pattern we liked in order to assure us proper walking space between rows of plants.
Once all of the tires were placed and ready to be filled it was time to get proper top soil. The first time I went, I purchased 10 large bags (1.75) and was only able to fill about 6 of the smallest tires. Based on that math, I would have needed at least 130 bags of soil which could be quite expensive. So I loaded up the pickup truck and got 4 loads of garden grade top soil from the local feed store. Each load was about 1/2 yard and allowed me to fill more than 12 larger tires and cost about 1/5 of the price bags for the same amount.
I started my seedlings in March indoors and kept them going strong over the following two months until the garden was ready for them. I am new to the gardening and farming community so I am experimenting with placement of the plants. But for the most part I kept all of the taller and climbing plants to the top tier and the outside tires. I am trying to keep most of the crawling plants to the bottom tier and most of my peppers and other veggies are in the middle row. I also experimented with putting single plants in tires and sharing tires for 3 or 4 of the same plants to see which ones produce more over the season.
Now that all or most of the plants are in tires and a free meal for the wildlife I am building a deer net fence and metal gate system for easy access to humans but not critters. The total project took me a couple of weeks dedicating maybe a total of 20+ hours towards the construction of the garden itself. I will try to keep garden updates on the regular as this will be my first real attempt of a full garden this year.
