Well, yesterday my two kids and I made a trip to the garden store, bought some petunias and some hardy, sun-loving flowers, and a little plant food. Then we emptied out the bottom of the compost bin (rich, rain-smelling compost), loaded up a wheel barrow with the plants, our shovels, some seeds, and water, and off we went to pretty up the lot.
My three-year-old was very excited about making a guerrilla garden and told her daycare all about it, jumping up and down in her monkey dance, and I could tell immediately that she wasn’t picturing what I was picturing when I used the word “guerrilla.” And, well, these things must be handled delicately. (A few years ago we took a camping trip to Lake Elmo north of St. Paul; her crushed expecations almost ruined her whole weekend.)
El Dragón: You’re excited about making a guerrilla garden but this is a different kind of “guerrilla.” It’s not an ape, it’s something else.
La Dragóncita: [bummed] What is it?
El Dragón: This is a guerrrrilla, which means someone who’s sneaky.
La Dragóncita: [warming] Yeah.
El Dragón: It’s someone who does things all on their own, all by themselves, without asking.
La Dragóncita: Yeah!
El Dragón: We’re going to make a garden without asking!
La Dragóncita: Yeah!!
So once we were all on the same page, we went to the lot, rolled the tires into a triangle and dug up dirt for the tire-planters. It was disturbing to find so much ash and burned paper still in the dirt — reminders of the house-fire from over a year ago. Maybe there’s something positive in that? I’m assuming the carbon in the soil will be good for the flowers. I hope so.
A couple neighbors were very curious about what we were doing and hung out in their driveways, pretending to be working on their cars. Hard to blame them, I guess — not often you see a squad of gardeners in lucha libre masks.
We live in a very Latino neighborhood, so El Dragóncito, my son, did recieve a few enthusiastic honks. It wasn’t all Norski Minnesota frowing.
And here’s the final product. Not bad for a bunch of gorillas.
My Aunt swears by car tires for potato plants. As the vines grow you add a tire to the stack, fill with dirt, up to about 5 tires. The black rubber creates a warmer soil (my aunt lives in Two Harbors.) And in the fall you just pull the tires off and the potatoes fall onto the ground or the plucking.
The thought of wierd chemicals from the tires have kept me from trying it though.
Try making baskets for the potatoes out of green, flexible branches that would otherwise be yard debris (grapevines, bamboo, laurel hedge branches, etc). Use the same concept as the tires.
Great idea regarding potatoes! But, yeah, I wouldn’t grow food in these tires. They were pretty skanky.
On the other hand, for flowers, they’re terrific. Great to reuse them rather than throw them in a landfill — or a neighborhood lot. Sheesh.
What a great idea! You have very lucky neighbors.
Thanks! I think my neighbors were feeling more perplexed than lucky. “For the love of Pete, are those freaks going to come over and dig in MY garden next??”