In the best manner of Earth Day, who not consider recycling your old tires? I've saved a few bucks over the years utilizing old tires as raised planting beds for vegetables. Stacked two high, tires make ideal "containers." not only do the tires act as raised beds where you can customize your own soil, but the black tires retain heat and actually helps plants get off to a faster start in spring.
Tires are useful as well for growing such things as herbs in a confined area, especially those that have a tendency to ramble. Stack them three high around clumps of rhubarb. The rhubarb will grow long stems in an effort to reach light as it grows up through the center of the tires.
I've even used old tires in place of railroad ties to stabilize a problem slope. Why pay $10 apiece for used railroad ties that won't exactly enhance your garden when tire shops may even pay you to haul some tires away? I laid my tires so they overlapped each other up the slope. Each course was laid to follow the contour. As each layer was finished, soil and/or gravel was shoveled into the tires and leveled off. Once a tire is anchored by the weight of the soil, it's not going to go anywhere.
There's also a glut on the market for recycled newspaper. However, a soil scientist in Alabama has found that shredded newspaper used as a soil amendment drastically improved the hard layer of clay soils. The results? Increased crop yields.
Jim Edwards, Jr., found that cotton plants growing in two- and four-foot deep trenches filled with a mix of 50 percent soil, 40 percent shredded newspapers (at a rate of roughly 10 times per acre) and 10 percent poultry litter (which "cooks" the newsprint so it decomposes quicker), yielded 50 percent more than the control plots. Edwards also applied shredded paper to the soil surface at 20 tons per acre, which resulted in increased yields, too. He's hoping to test surface application as a means of restoring soil cover on thousands of acres of agricultural cropland in Texas.
Go To Page: 1 2
