Recycle Tire Planter - Under $80.00

I saw the same photo on Pinterest that everyone else saw... you know the one with flowers flowing out of some colorful tires.  I knew I had to do it! I had five tires in my garage ironically enough, and after searching a friends place I found some smaller cute ones. I laid out the tires in the spot where I had pulled up a long above ground vegetable box.  I went to Lowe's and bought some spray paint (actually made two trips, as I forgot the all important pink & orange!). 

 What had me in a quandary for about a week, was what & how was I going to keep and hold the dirt in the tires without having to use a lot of soil, and just in the off case I might want to move them one day.  I knew that something would come to me, but in the mean time I needed to get the painting started!

We played around with the design & color combinations for a few days until we finally come up with what we thought we wanted to do.  Still had to come up with a way to hold the dirt in the tires without using a ton of soil.  I searched around on Pinterest until I saw a photo on how to make a vertical planter. They used burlap or plastic backing, but I wanted to use something I already had, as I was trying very hard to stay within the recycle, reuse or up-cycle mode & wanted to keep the project as cheap as possible!  At this point I had spent $40 bucks on paint! That's when it hit me that I have plenty of bags that hold the duck's corn!  They are a plastic burlap bag of sorts, and would be just....Perfect!  We gathered all the tools we thought we would need our for the project. 

 Our morning started with Lemon trying to help us straighten out the burlap bags so we could cut them open. We just laid the bags over the tires and cut enough to cover the holes.  My first thought was to just staple the bags on the bottom of the tires and fill then up.  After a few minutes of consideration we felt that would be fine for the ones laying on the ground, but the ones on the upper levels we would have to come up with a support system. 

We had a few pallets laying around (yes that's another project taking place), so we pulled a few boards off one of the pallets to help with the support of the dirt.  I did not want the dirt to lay on the boards, as they would deteriorate & the dirt would fall through from the weight of the soil.  So we cut out three boards per tire and stapled the them onto the bag and inverted them into the tires.  This way the plastic burlap bag would hold the dirt & protect the wood slates, while the wood slates would help support the dirt in the tires.

Now we needed to drill some more hole in the tires for drainage, and tacked down the plastic bag inside the tire until they could be filled with dirt.

We placed the tires back out onto the ground, when we realized we could not remember what the original arraignment looked like!  We played with the colors again, while looking at the photos I had taken.  Pull this one here and pull that one there.  That's when we had the thought to turn the smaller pink tire on its side.  Hey that looks great, but I think it needs another small tire.  I quickly break out the paint can and painted a small blue tire.  Once the pink tire was turned on it's side it showed the fence and needed something... something to hide the fence.  I started for the garage we found an old temperature dial off the fence that has not worked for over a year, and I had never thrown away. By George it fit perfectly.  Grabbed the gorilla glue and 30 minutes later it was ready to go!  We commenced in filling in the tires with top soil and then topped it off with the better garden soil. Finishing off with some plants and added some bedding flower seeds for additional flowers to come up...........

Voila!

Supplies Used:

9 - Used Tires 

5 - Plastic Burlap Feed Bags 

10 - 40 lbs. Bags of Cheap Top Soil @ $1.35 per bag**

1 - 40 lbs. Bag of Garden Soil @ $4.50

7 - Can of Spray Paint @ $4.95 per can

8 - Plants @ $25.00

4 - Plants from the Garden 

1 - Pack Seeds @ $1.00

1 - Old Pallet 

1 - Hammer

1 - Saw 

1 - Staple Gun with 5/18 staples

1 - Drill with 5/18 drill

1 - Scissors

1 - Tube of Gorilla Glue

1- Used Temperature Dial

1 - Pug Helper

Total Project Cost 

$78.65 

**Instead of field dirt to keep the tires from being so heavy, use empty water bottle to fill in the sides**

This was taken in May, as you can see the Easter Lilies are almost gone.  I split a fern and shoved a bunch of bulbs in the top tire.

This shot was taken December 21, 2012.  The tires have shown the wear from the Texas heat and have faded.  Pink and Orange do not like the sun!  The Ferns in the top tire are starting to come in!