Home-steading- Gardening

Gardening

Gardening was never my 'thing'. I always associated it with grandma's. While we still lived in Ithaca, I gave a tomato garden a try. Planted too many and harvested few. My neighbors tomatoes flourished. I was bummed. We moved and I tried again with a wide row/ mound technique and failed...ugh. I didn't know I had to add compost etc to make it go. I was just mounding spent dirt.

Then last yr I saw the above picture on the web and I got inspired! I had a dozen gigantic and freakin heavy tractor tires delivered to my yard. Both my mother and my husband looked at me cross eyed for this stunt. I spent a few weeks mastering the saws-all and opening each tire up. Bout vibrated my arm off. I moved the tires into neat rows of 4.

Then I ran in circles collecting free manure from here and there. I shoveled each and every scoop of compost and manure into my 15 passenger van then out of the van and into the tires. Serious hard core labor!

Then I planted. It wasn't long before I saw amazing results. I have never seen tomatoes so big! The great thing about this method is that once its set up its unbelievably easy. There is virtually no weeding and a lot less bending.

This year is the second yr with the raised beds and there was virtually no prep before planting. All I did was take our home supply of composted manure from the bins and top off the tires and stir. I planted directly into the beds with milk jug hot caps and am wildly successful. This yr I opted to mulch around the tires just for pretty sake. We also added 4 long narrow beds for collards, kale, spinach and strawberries. For these we just outlined our bed with bricks and dumped in compost. There were more weeds with these but still very successful. I would totally recommend these raised tire beds.