Tire Planting

Two people responded to my recent post mentioning tire planting.... specifically, "what did you mean 'the tire planting was a bust?'" I realized I'd never actually written about it- and I think it's so important!

First of all, discarded tires - a blight on the landscape, a nightmare when piles catch fire, a 1.5 million tons/year extra dumping in the US alone- are also a tremendously valuable natural urban resource.

Durable, accessible, easily moved around by rolling no matter how big- they're a perfect container for planting. The black rubber absorbs heat, which keeps roots warm, which in turn extends the planting season- both early and late season crops are possible in places too cold to plant in the ground.

Stacked tires make a lovely raised bed- minimal bending & stooping- and hold enough earth to accommodate even root vegetables quite well, making them a favorite for potatoes, which one report states yielded, in a single season, 25 lbs of potaoes from four stacked tires!

Fears of heavymetal contamination are groundless; washed tires contain heavy metals, but they're tightly bonded with the rubber... and not likely to be taken up by plants, with the exception of zinc- contained in tires, easily taken up by plants that like it, and an essential human nutrient.

As if that weren't elegant enough to satisfy the most fastidious tastes, tires are ALSO a perfect container for use on concrete or otherwise tough-to-plant surfaces. In fact, perfect for holding pockets of food and medicine plants in urban areas that are usually unplantable. And often have plenty of tires piled up somewhere, if not piled then dumped singly in alleys and ditches and parking lots. And no one seems to mind if you take them away, although it seems it must be against the law to pick up discards. In fact, in Mexico, Cuba, most of South America, parts of Africa and North America have pockets of tire gardens- it's a delight to reel through the references online, the pictures, the manymany people growing food in sometimes such difficult circumstances, the possibilities!

The photo above is J.A.R., a Mexico City Punk Collective that's reclaiming and greening the abandoned Commons; I couldn't find a photo, but they use tires regularly.

Unfortunately for them, some people seem to have a class and/or aesthetic problem with tires lying around, yielding beautiful greenery or not; one partner asked me to hide them, and a neighbor complained, with a sniffing nose, "but tires..... can't you use something else?" Well, no, actually, I can't...... and I'm delighted to have them around!