On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 11:50:10 GMT, Heather Husvar
wrote:

After poking around back there I am figuring on 16 tires arranged
like this: | || | and we are putting pea gravel in between to make the
aisles attractive and easy to navigate. Now I need to figure out what
I'm going to plant. I am figuring one tomato or pepper plant for a tire
which takes out 6 tires if I go with three tomato plants, three pepper
plants.

We put three bell-pepper plants per tire this year, it was
enough space for them. They did well.

The tomatoes - caged - nevertheless will need more room -
they overgrow adjoining tires otherwise. You can spread the
tires out some, or you can harvest spring stuff from a tire
first (lettuce, Asian greens) and let the tomatoes just
shade it out later in the season.


(actually, 2 bellpepper plants and then one tire of jalapeno
peppers which I think 3 jalapeno plants in a tire). This leaves me 10
tires to plan and agonize over for the next few months.. Yay! I just
need to figure out what I'd most like to have. So, is any one else as
neurotic as I am and thinking about next year?


Not neurotic, just a gardener! Winter is for planning
the next year, that's why we have winter. And to
rest...

With 16 tires, I would tend to concentrate on stuff that we
cannot get here in the stores - fresh and of good quality -
particularly salad greens, Asian greens, chard, beets, also
basil and a few other herbs. (Fresh basil is irreplaceable
to me.) I grow a lot of Asian greens (can't buy them here,
and they're FAST - this is a good characteristic).

Beans you'll have from your MIL's place, so that's OK.

With 16 tires, I wouldn't plant the things I can buy cheaply
and of decent quality: potatoes, onions, carrots, corn in
season, cabbage.

I will plant these next year - except corn - but we'll have
about 60 tires plus the hoophouse, so I'll have room for
them.

Think succession plantings: you can get a crop of lettuce
or baby bok choy out of a tire in time to plant a tomato in
it.

Mel Bartholomew's book 'Square Foot Gardening' is a really
good guide for tire-gardening, IMHO. He can be overly
dogmatic (most writers can), but you can easily adapt his
ideas to tire-gardening. And they pay off in less-labor,
plus more harvests.

Pat
--
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry