Garden Gizmos

colinS

In the photos you can see what can be made from and old tyre; one compost bin and two Sustead Lollipops. I'll start with the compost bin.

Cut the rims of the tyre with a jig saw, and put them aside. Make three sets of two holes close together, about 120 degrees apart in the center of the tyre. This will mean drilling through the outside rubber, but don't do, as I first did, drill through the steel mesh, it knocks hell out of the drill. Just get a iron spike of some sort, and punch it through with a club hammer. Take a sufficient length of chicken wire to surround the tyre, offer it to one of the sets of holes, and push a wire tie through both the holes in the tyre, to retain the chicken wire. From the inside of the tyre twist the two prongs of the wire tie to secure it. Just wrap the chicken wire around the tyre, securing it in the same fashion. Then wire up where it joins, and you have a cheap (if you have some old chicken wire), light and portable compost bin. I really don't know why people pay out money for expensive compost bins, unless it's just that they want to see their garden looking perfect - and there's nothing wrong in that. I have never had much success composting until I used these tyre bins. In composting we are dealing with aerobic bacteria and I don't think you can beat chicken wire for letting air in. I also use my bins to store my leaves, which I collect at this time of the year.




Now for the Sustead Lollipop.

You get two sides from the tyre, so you need a couple of lengths of scrap wood - 2x1, or something like that. Just nail it as in the picture. Then make a series of holes around the outside, upper edge of each lollipop. Then hammer them into the ground about a metre apart. You can now fix a cane or thin plank to the tops join the two together for rigidity. Now run some string through the holes in the edges of each lollipop, again joining the two. Now, if you can get some polytunnel plastic you are made - I haven't been able to do so. There just doesn't seem anywhere local to me that sells small amounts of polytunnel plastic, or any polytunnel plastic for that matter. I have had to use a 12x12 dust sheet from Wickes. It's very thin, so I have to double it. I had a new multi fuel stove delivered a while back, so I sandwiched the plastic wrapping from that in the dust sheet, but I double it I'll get many winters from this cloche.

I have driven a stick into the ground level with each of the sides to the tyres, and one each side halfway between, just to stop the plastic blowing in and out under where the string supports end. Just in from and behind the cloche are some of my carrots in bottles, which I have just posted on in another thread. There's some old 99p store fruit netting over the top of the plastic, with my can weights holding it all down.







I hope this use of an old tyre is of some use to some of you.

Davesnave

I like your ideas, though currently all 90 of our tyres are either being used as movable windbreaks, supports for chicken gyms or as an extra layer of defence between us and one of the neighbours.

Now it costs so much to dispose of tyres, there's a real need for finding alternative uses, though down my way, starting a bonfire in inclement weather with one seems to be de rigeuer.

Sambucus_Nigra

For my leaf mould bins, I just pop 4 canes into the ground and the chicken wire goes over them [thread the canes throught he chicken wire] - and for my frames to hold netting I use blue pipe.

My tyres [I have 3] get used to force my rhubarb.

I don't like using tyres too much next to compost as we don't know what bad stuff is leaching out of them as they slowly decompose.

Davesnave

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

I don't like using tyres too much next to compost as we don't know what bad stuff is leaching out of them as they slowly decompose.

I think this may be a concern, though I note that chipped tyres have, and probably still are, used as mulch for pathways etc.

It's certainly illegal to bury them, although those who have the most, probably have the best opportunities to do so, undetected.