A pleasant surprise

Years ago, we filled a couple old tractor tires to make some raised beds for stuff like carrots.  Now, I know some will cry you shouldn’t use tires because who knows what chemicals leak out of them.  That is a concern, but I also know that in the area I live for the past century or so, if you had a pile of brush to burn but it was wet, just throw some used motor oil on it to get it going.  Or, if you had an old tire lying around, even better.  So there’s no telling what chemicals have been raining down on my regular garden for the past century.  And still raining down.  I sadly live in an area where I probably don’t have to go too far upwind to find someone who thinks climate change is all a communist hoax to take away their guns.  They probably burn a tire every weekend just to show the libs.  I am in the process of getting some metal raised beds to grow food in, so in a few years these tires will just be growing flowers. 

Anyway, when these tires were filled, they were just filled with some fill dirt we had.  I wasn’t overly happy with this, because I joked this fill dirt was half gravel, but we didn’t have any good soil to fill them.  Over the years, I’ve added compost and picked out some of the bigger rocks, but I’ve always wanted to screen the dirt to get all the rocks out of it.  But that would mean building a screen.  Which, I just never got around to doing.  One day I was looking online, and I came across these little round pans about ten inches in diameter with three different sized screens you can put in them.  I ordered one, and it works pretty well.  It’s just I have a lot of dirt to screen.  But once it’s done, I won’t have to do it again.

The way the tires were laid out wasn’t that great, so last fall I decided to move them.  Once I get them all moved, the lawn mower will fit between them so I won’t have to use a weedeater to mow.  But with the wet weather last fall, I didn’t get much done.  So I wanted to get them done now, but with the spring wet weather, it’s slow going.  And it turns out my joke that the dirt was half gravel, probably isn’t too far off.  I use the medium screen to get all the sizable rocks out, and then I screen again with the smallest screen, and it seems about a third of what makes it through the medium screen is little pebbles caught by the smallest. 

Besides rocks there have been some unpleasant finds.  I’ve found a couple bits of broken bottles, a couple pieces of metal wire, and an old, rusted latch, or something.  These probably haven’t negatively affected our plants, but it’s better to not have them.

I’ve also found some good things.  There are a bunch of old leaves that fell into the tires as well as small clumps of grass clippings I used as mulch last year.  And there’s bits of old compost, such as flecks of egg shells, shreds of old tea bags, and small pieces of well-rotted wood.  But the biggest surprise are the worms.  It seems about every screen has one or two worms in it.  I don’t know if it’s just because the tires are black and therefore warm in the cool spring, or if there is enough organic matter in the soil for the worms to live on.  One of my biggest worries has been the soil quality not being that great.  Hopefully, I’ve added enough compost over the years to build up some okay soil.  And once I get all the rocks out of it, hopefully plants will grow even better.  Well, the plants I want to grow, not just weeds.