Construction Method of the Week: Tire Beds

Community gardens face various issues when starting up. One of the major issues can be building raised beds. Raised beds have many different advantages. For example, we use ours to improve access for members of the community that have knee or back issues. We also use ours because the soil in Escalante park has the density of asphalt when it is dry out (there are also some pH and nutrient issues). This forces us to only plant our vegetables in raised beds.

The ubiquitous wooden raised bed is nice. It looks good, it holds up well to the elements, and it is easy to build. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive. The most logical setup (in our humble opinion) is to build a 4 foot by 8 foot bed since lumber is sold in 8 foot segments. This minimizes cuts and wasted lumber. Even with this cost cutting measure , our basic model adds up to over $200 each:

Now these beds are nice and they should pay for themselves eventually, but the cost of these beds really add up quickly. So if you are looking at starting up a garden and don't want to wear your fingers to the bone grant writing, it would be nice if there were some other options.

Our first strategy is tires:

We got this pile just by asking nicely at a few tire shops around the Valley. These tires can be stacked into various shapes and are very easy and inexpensive to set up. The big questions that remain are the durability, aesthetics, and ability to grow plants in them.

In regards to durability, we have been growing in one set of tire beds for a year now. This means they have outlasted two generations of straw bale beds. The tires have slumped and settled a little, but in other respects are structurally sound.
As you can see from the picture, we painted the tires. We did this for a number of reasons. The first is that it is fun to give children paint (provided you can send them back to their own parents after). Second, painting the tires makes them look less like a pile of tires and therefore makes your garden look slightly less like a landfill. Finally, we worried that the black tires would absorb too much heat and burn the plants growing in them. As you can see above, this was the middle of summer and the plants growing in the tires grew quite well.

The last issue I have heard is that tires have various heavy metals in them that could leech out into your soil and get into your plants. This would be very bad. However, I have not found any sources that record this happening. Also, used tires have gone through some extreme situations while attached to their respective cars. This includes huge temperature swings, being pressurized and having multiple tons of metal resting on them. So I am willing to wager that any volatile chemicals in them would have been leeched out or burned off by now.

Overall, these tire beds seem to be the most economical way to build raised beds. The only downsides are that you are limited in height and that some people may not like the look of them.

Lessons from the Phoenix winter

Since we are now deep into our first winter here at the garden, it's time to give an update on what is going well and what we won't be trying next year. As always at the garden, we hope to act as a community resource for what grows and doesn't grow in our area.

Lesson 1: Radishes are easy
They germinate quickly, they are harvestable size in around 3 weeks (carrots don't even germinate for 2 weeks) and they don't take up that much space. All of these characteristics are great for a plant growing in an urban garden where space is at a premium. The lesson to take home from this for us is that we don't need to dedicate a growing bed to radishes. They grow so quickly that we can inter-plant radishes with nearly any other crops. By the time even a moderately quick growing plant is large enough to cause a problem, the radishes will be completely harvested.

Lesson 2: Greens are amazing in the Phoenix winterAbove are pictures of our kale and escarole. Both did quite well and we plan to plant more of both of them next fall. Many of our greens were harvested multiple times and recovered quickly. The arugula set the record with 5 cuttings.

One trait is worth noting when taking multiple cuttings from these greens: each successive harvest will be a little different. This is because the plant thinks some animal is wandering past and eating it (which is true, of course). Therefore, the plant will make the next regrowth a little tougher so the next animal won't be as hasty to eat it. That is bad because everyone likes greens that are a little more tender. On the other hand, the plants will also raise the amount of defensive chemicals in the leaves. Although this sounds bad, the defensive chemicals in domesticated plants do not effect humans. That's why (or because) we domesticated them. In fact, many plants are preferred because of their defensive chemicals. What does this mean for the extra cuttings of greens in your garden? Well, your mustard greens will be more mustard-y and your arugula will be more peppery.

Also, I have failed to mention the "sturdier" greens such as collard and chard. These are doing very well at the garden and are definitely worth planting in a small garden or container.

Lesson 3: Root vegetables are ok....
I wish I could give more definitive advice for the home gardeners out there. Instead all I can say is that root crops like carrots, beets, and turnips take up more space and take longer to produce a harvest. If you either really love these vegetables or have a lot of space, than it's worth growing them. However, here at the garden, we might have better luck raising other crops.

The turnips have already been harvested. Overall, they took up a lot of space and produced only about a dozen good sized turnips. However, they did also provide a lot of turnip greens from when we had to thin them.

The carrots seemed to take an eternity to finally establish. However, now that they have formed a thick canopy of greens, the roots are growing quickly. We planted the carrots pretty close to each other with plans to thin them and the carrots we are thinning are now big enough to eat. Overall, our carrot bed is going to quickly pass up our turnip bed in production. Plus, I think everyone at the food bank prefers carrots.

Lastly, the beets have been looking quite pretty, but also very very slow growing. It may be our variety (bull's blood beets), but these beets have had low germination, slow establishment and small tuber size.

Lesson 4: Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli...coming soon.
Two weeks ago, I would not have much positive to say about our brassicas, but recently our broccoli and cabbage have been growing faster than anything else at the garden. As of yesterday, we had our first broccoli head sighting.

Chicken Diary: Day 7

After a week of chickens at the community garden, Dave and I have learned a few important lessons.

First, these chickens are surprisingly sneaky (above is the most stealthy looking picture I could find). Closing the coop door seems to have no effect on them. Hopefully as they grow bigger, they won't be able to squeeze through the open spots in the coop.

Second lesson: Our hens show a surprising level of teamwork. Don't assume the word teamwork means they are well coordinated or make what would be considered "good" decisions. Far from it. They show the same kind of teamwork you would see in the Keystone Cops. If one runs into a wall, all of them run into the wall.

The last lesson for the week is that they have very particular tastes. As you can see above, they get a mix of whatever is going to go bad at the food bank so they get a full salad bar of options. The remains of what they don't like goes on the compost pile. As you can see, they will ignore everything if there is sweet corn anywhere in the pen. I should point out that there is one exception to their love of sweet corn: insects. Paleontologists have been telling us that birds are closely related to dinosaurs and at no point is that more obvious than when these gals see a beetle. It looks like the velociraptor scenes in Jurrasic Park.

In other news from the garden, the cool season crops are really growing quickly now.