I'm Getting Old and want to Grow Things!

"I’m an old Southern woman and we’re supposed to wear funny looking hats and ugly clothes and grow vegetables in the dirt. Don’t ask me those questions. I don’t know WHY. I don’t make the rules."-Ouiser Boudreaux

     I'm having a Ouiser Boudreaux kind of moment.  I'm feeling old and want to grow something in the dirt!  I've been talking about growing me some vegetables this season and figuring out the best and easiest ways to do it for me.  Now, I'm not talking about a massive undertaking, I just wanted some tomatoes, onions, maybe some peppers and a few herbs for Hubby and me to use.  I looked at my options and worked on getting Hubby on board for this whole undertaking.  The things I get him into, I swear!  Bless his Heart for encouraging my hairbrained ideas!  Thank You Lord for giving me an understanding man!  Especially after today!  

     As I saw it, our options looked like this...  
Raised Beds - too expensive and time consuming to build, and the sunny spot in my yard is WAY not level.  

Plow up a chunk of my yard - No tiller, and if it turned out that my decidedly brown thumb extended to actual gardening i'd have a huge mud hole in my yard until it leveled out and grew some grass.  Nope, my sensibilities just couldn't handle that.  

Container Gardening - hmmm... not too bad, but then what will I do with all the containers when winter comes?  

     Then my friend Kellie told me about the Tire Gardening that the folks out at The Old Farts Farm do.  She buys the sweetest and cutest goats from them!  Anyway, she said, "They just stack up tires, fill em with dirt and grow stuff in em!"  Yep!  That sounds right up my alley and it can be kind of cute too!  So, off I go scouting out places to get old tires... lo and behold, not three miles from me is (to me) a motherlode of absolutely free tires ripe for the picking!  So now we're off to the races!  Woot!  

     I could hardly sit still this morning during our dental appointments thinking about getting started on or "Garden" once we got home!  I looked up websites on my phone about tire gardening, how to do it; what are the risks from the rubber; and what's the best way to get started.  I pretty much busted my data plan for the rest of the month I'm sure.  So, after a quick lunch, it was run home, get changed, and head out to Lowe's for the goods!  

     On our way back home we swung by to pick up maybe four tires.  Well, we ended up with four big ol' truck tires, one car tire, and one wide and narrow walled racing type tire.  Carried away much?  Nah!  Not us!  LOL!  I found online that several people were cutting one or both sidewalls off their tires to make more growing room.  Heck yeah!  Let's do that!  Trust me folks, it's NOT EASY!  They say that you can cut tires with a jigsaw, it didn't work for us, but Hubby's old knife with a little bit of serrated edge did the job really nicely!  Dirt, Dirt, and more Dirt... then I couldn't help myself and had to plant in them right away!  We do need more dirt, and I'll fill around the stuff I've already planted probably tomorrow, but I'm really proud of my little "Garden"!

My First Tire Garden!  We are seriously thinking about painting
them some fun colors too!

Nevermind the weeds growing on the fence and the overgrown lawn please!
We're going to mow tomorrow!

Tire #1 has a Celebrity Tomato, a Sun Gold Cherry Tomato & White Onions.
Tire #2 has a Sweet Marconi Pepper, a Tobasco Pepper, Boxwood Basil,
Lemon Thyme & Rosemary. 

Tire #3 has my gifted plants.  Three Broccoli plants and an unknown
Pepper plant.  Tire #4 has Sweet Mint, a Cherokee Purple Tomato,
and a Husky Red Cherry tomato plant.

See?  I got my hands dirty!

I even had dirt under my fingernails!  LOL!

Poor Hubby was pooped!  

So wish us luck!  If they make it through the night without getting eaten by something or dug up by the neighborhood cats I'll be posting updates soon!





HUGS!