Friday 23 September 2016

Creating a Wicking Garden out of Old Tyres

Living in Perth means that we have very poor, sandy soil and the summers are very harsh. Some of my less water-wise or established plants don't survive the heat and dryness. I have been experimenting with all kinds of raised beds and waterwise garden options to see if I could still have a lush garden throughout the year without having to use a lot of water from the tap.

 I did some research and found a lot of information about wicking gardens, so I decided to make some of my own. My car needed new tyres, so I asked the tyre place to give me my old tyres back and I would take them home and use them.
These are the materials I used: 
  1. two tyres
  2. some black liner to line the bottom tyre to hold the water
  3. some wood to fill the bottom tyre with (the wicking well). This will break down over time. You can also use rocks, gravel, bark chips, anything organic and chunky, really. I just had some little logs lying around and thought I'd give them a try
  4. Some rags, to separate the dirt from the wicking well 
  5. a piece of PVC pipe, which extends to the bottom of the wicking well, so you can fill it easily, and always see how much water is inside
  6. Some nice soil
I cut the black liner into a circle much larger than the tire. and placed it into the tyre.

 
 
Then I filled the bottom tyre with the wood, and placed the PVC pipe in so it reached to the bottom.


I put the rags on top, to create a barrier between the soil and the wicking well.
 
At this point, I moved the whole thing into position.

The final stage was to put the other tyre on top, and fill it up with compost and nice organic soil, and put my plant into it. I filled the well with water by putting the hose into the PVC pipe. Any surplus water should spill out the top of the bottom tyre. I wedged it open a bit with a thick stick to let that happen.

A piece of bamboo or other long stick poked in the PVC pipe will work as a fill meter, to see how much water is in the reservoir. No point topping up the water well if it is not necessary.

As you can see from the photo below, my Pepino plant is thriving in its environment. This is my most successful Pepino ever.