recycle tire planters?

[lazy gardener]

How soon was this after you planted the potatoes? What was the overall temp? Was it in the hottest/driest part of the summer? I can see where potato vines would die prematurely if it was too hot or dry for their liking. Any signs of disease? Look up potato diseases and see if you can find some pictures to try to id what yours looked like when they started dying. Have you grown potatoes before, so that you're familiar with their life cycle? They start setting tubers when they blossom. Then the vines naturally die a month or two later.

 

[AnnieE]

Oh, i dk. Planted the potatoes in one tire and added tires as the vines grew up. I live in michigan and we didnt have an overly hot summer. No drought. Pretty sure the vines died a month or more before they should have. Just small, no where near full grown, tubers.

 

[lazy gardener]

I don't know. It would be hard to know if it was disease or due to the tires. I've never heard of anyone having tires cause plants to die. I've heard that people have very good luck growing tomatoes and vine crops in them for the extra heat and moisture retention.

 

[AnnieE]

Im not saying dont grow anything in tires. Just saying didnt work for me. Maybe if someone is more alert to the plants than i might have been, might have more luck.

 

[angiadelle]

We've used tires as planters for a couple of years now. I painted a bunch of different sizes bright cheery colors and used them without any alterations. It really hasn't worked out the greatest. We tried placing the tires in a row as well as stacking them 2 and 3 tiers high. The ones that were stacked either flooded or washed out every last bit of soil during the first rain storm.

All of the tires end up baking the plants in them come summer. Even tires that were painted light colors and placed in the shade ended up baking their plants. We get summer temps in excess of 100 F. The tomatoes were the only plants that really enjoyed their tires.

By the second year we had problems with insects in the tire planters. The bright colors really caught the attention of grasshoppers. They would annihilate anything in the tires and not touch the lettuce growing less than 3 feet away in a raised bed made out of a blue kiddie pool.

We have a couple more tires so I'm going to try cutting along the sidewall and flipping them inside out for planters and a dust bath. I've also heard that folks have better luck using them as hanging planters!

I will say that even though we've not had the best of luck with it, we've had a blast scavenging, painting and planting!

Plus every single tire used is one less breeding pool for mosquitoes!

 

[VKat]

We get hot summers here too. I'm thinking I may try a tomato plant or two in tires to see how they like it.
Turns out you have to pay a fee here to turn tires over to recycling. How stupid is that? No wonder previous inhabitants left them :/
Trying to think of other uses too.
Chicken dust bath
Maybe a turkey nest if I fill one with straw?
We also have goats. Maybe I can make a tire climbing thing for them to play on.

 

[henless]

I've been thinking about using tires for my tomatoes also. I have raised beds, and they take up so much room that I could be using for other crops.

 

[hereorthere]

RichnSteph: When using tires with mulch for trees, have you had problems with mice or voles girdling the trees in that protected environment? I put a tire and mulch around a little ash tree that I'm trying to salvage, and planned to remove it before the ground froze, but did not get around to it. The critters mowed one of my dwarf lilacs to the ground last winter, but thankfully the bush came back nice and thick, and no worse for the wear!

I'm planning to try some tires in my garden for tomato plants this spring, and may use a tire or two to make a concentrated area to hold compost for planting in my new (and growing HK mound.)

Simply try wrapping heavy duty aluminum foil around the base of your tree. Do start about 1/2 inch in the soil. Do leave a bit of space around the circumference for air circulation. Did this to our figs which were newly planted last winter and they survived great this past summer. Not a scratch..... but did learn the hard way when the mice & voles ate up the trunks of our young willows from 2yrs ago.

Also you can get some of the corrugated plastic black pipes, make a slit down the entire length, and wrap around the base of tree trunk. Have used this for past few years but had no time to run to store to get more hence our innovative use of foil. It's cheaper & worked.