Still Working on the Garden

As you can see, I got that spa back to my house. I was also given 7 more tires for the wall.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the pump for the spa, but did get the heater unit. I don't know what I'm going to do with the heater, but the spa is getting turned into a raised garden area.
It's big enough for a fruit tree, so I may do that. It has eye bolts on the base for moving the spa and these may prove useful if I ever have to net or put plastic over the tree. That will still give me room for flowers or food crops around the base of the tree.
Now I just need to set it down and make sure the drain hole is unplugged so that excess water doesn't accumulate.

I also got some dirt into the bottom row of tires. They are mostly truck tires--16's and 30's.
After I put the dirt in I ran a hose out and started compacting the dirt and filling the voids in the tires.
The soil out here has a lot of powdery clay. It's going to make quite a formidable wall.
 On the left, I have the hose trickling water into the tires. I'm using rebar and and a hoe to move the slurry of mud into the voids. I don't know if you can tell but the voids use about half the dirt, so I'm going to be bringing more in on a continuous basis.

It's been hot today, so I was out with the large straw hat, and gloves because the rebar gets hot in the sun.
 I'm hoping the amount of clay in the soil will make for a good semi-finished surface at the form boards.

As you can see, I still have more tires. That is probably not enough to complete the wall, but it will be enough to get the wall of tires done a few feet out from the block wall in the background.
I did notice a low flow in the garden hose out this far. This will be OK for drip irrigation, but I may need to put a booster on my well.

Gardening Part Deux

On this first day of summer, I spent the majority of the day doing more gardening prep work. I will be using a lot of materials that I have on hand. Most were picked up second hand--much of it free or at little cost. For example, I arranged to remove a spa out of someone's backyard. It has no heater, so few people want it. I want to use the spa as a raised garden bed, and can use the pump for the fish pond I want to grow.

In the picture above you can see the remnants of a couple of Chinese Elm trees that I removed. I'll have to keep an eye out for shoots popping up around the yard again. It's about 95' from the block wall to the back of that garage. I plan to make the garden about 60' off the back wall, which will allow me access to the septic system and should give me enough room to eventually put a gray water tank in.

Here you can see a smaller amount of tires. I took this picture toward the end of the day. In the lower left corner is the manual tire changing machine. I've had that for years and it's bolted down to the slab. The machine on the right, is a pneumatic tire changer that I picked up at the swap meet, and it's good for breaking the tires loose from the rim, but doesn't remove the tire very well. It's also not bolted down to the slab, yet. We ran an air hose from the garage to the wall, then behind the other stuff. You can see the air hose dropping off the back of the 1965 Ford Flatbed. In the lower right hand corner is a solar water heating panel.
My buddy, Steve, and I set up to removing tires. I would work the pneumatic changer, because I've worked in garages before, and I didn't want to take chances with him getting hurt/losing a finger. He provided the brute force for pulling the tires off. On a few of the larger tires we used my Bobcat to loosen the tire from the rim. Then we took the tires over by the wall and unit and sorted them by size.

Here is most of the tires we got done today. Not very many, but we moved quite a bit of stuff around, as well. So I don't feel to bad. If you look to the right of the line of tires you can see the air hose. I climbed from the cinder block to the top of the block wall and walked the hose back behind everything so that I can still maneuver the Bobcat and other vehicles back here.
The plan is to stack tires until they are about the same height as the block wall, filling each layer with soil to keep them in place. Then I can plant stuff in the terraced tires. I'm thinking herbs or some sort of ground cover or flower that keeps bugs away. A wall of color would be nice there. I'm also contemplating painting them white to keep the temperature of the soil down. I've read that a problem with raised beds, especially with all that black to absorb heat.
Just to the left of the lined up tires you can barely make out some grating.

Here is the grating. I have a bad problem with gophers on this property so I'm laying down the grating to help protect the crops. They aren't tight to the wall, because there's a cement footing there. I've slid the one under the tire. I picked up the grating from a walk-in refrigerator I was asked to remove. I plan on using the glass doors from the walk-in as part of my green house.
Happy Summer!