Yep, starting to think about gardening! My garden has been a mass of weeds for the past 2 summers, and due to it's proximity to the chicken house I want to move it anyway. Here is what I am thinking:

We are fencing in a small portion of the yard which will be the chicken-free zone. That way we can go barefoot there. :D LOL. I also want my garden in there, as I don't want the chickens hogging it all up. I am thinking of doing maybe 4-6 raised beds, and lasagna gardening. We don't have a tiller, and I think raised beds will be easier to work in w/o a tiller. Last year I did it all w/ a shovel and swore NEVER AGAIN! THat's why I want to start the lasagna method. I also really like the look of raised beds.

But, railroad ties and pressure treated wood are *out* as I don't want that crap leeching into my food. However, we don't have the money to invest in anything fancy to build the beds up with.
We do have access to basically as many free old tires as we could want (why do I keep saying "we"??? DH doesn't help. :rolleyes: )

I'm looking for good ideas on building up the beds, and making them look purty. I'd love to get some wood chips to put down between them, and some creeping thyme and chamomile to tuck in here and there.

Ah. I love dreaming about gardening!

I am going to do one... but I am using regular wood. We have extras from a few of my projects and I think that it will stand up if I do the plastic on the inside... so I am just going to staple it on the inside and then Lasagna garden in it. That is the trouble spot in my yard.... all that grew there last year was Kale. So it needs some help.

I think your old tires would make GREAT beds if you were willing to have 12 tiny beds instead of 5 or 6 large ones... you have to cut the sides off, and if you have access to LARGE tires then you can have larger beds. My mom has three potato beds that are made from huge tires that she jig sawed the sides off of and put dirt in. They were pretty sucessfull too. :)

I think the ideas you have so far sound great! I am not in a gardening mode yet, because if I was I would go CRAZY for the next 4 months until I could start planting. ;)

Love Val

IF you could get some cinder blocks, you could use those.
You can plant herbs in the holes of the cinder blocks.
The cinder blocks are supposed to be really good for herbs.

I have a bunch of bricks in my yard for some reason so I am going to make one of my raised beds using bricks.

The tire idea is good if that is what you have.
One year I used these huge plastic barrels vinegar comes in.
(Dh's aunt owns a bbq sauce company, so we could get all the free barrels we needed! Shameless plug: http://www.georgesbbqsauce.com )



Hope

As an update on mine I am using bricks too... the 14" by 8" walking stones put in the long way. They will look nice and not take up much space as my raised bed is between the side walk and the retaining wall of the back yard... it will get plenty of support. The cinder block herbs are a great idea too!

Love Val