Archive - Jan 2008

Kingdom: Plantae; Division: Magnoliophyta; Class: Magnoliopsida; Order: Cucurbitales; Family: Cucurbitaceae; Genera: Lagenaria, Cucurbita and Luffa.

Gourds

Gourds are one of the many plants in the Cucurbitaceae family which includes squash, pumpkin, melons and cucumber. Gourds are often used in crafting and many native cultures have used them for various purposes, including bottles, bowls and musical instruments. Gourds are not usually used for the food properties, but some species, mostly from Asia, are.

There are three major genera of gourds:

Lagenaria siceraria or Hardshell gourds are night blooming with white flowers which resemble tissue paper. They are pollinated by moths who are numerous in the night sky. They are the most common gourd used for crafting. There are only 6 species, but many varieties.

Cucurbita pepo or Ornamental gourds are daytime bloomers with large orange flowers. They are pollinated by bees who prefer to fly in the day. They are used mostly as table decorations, but to keep those beautiful colors they are often sprayed with a clear finish. The finish does not allow them to breath, so they rot quicker. They are sometimes used in crafts, but they should not be finished for crafts. For this reason, it is best to use ones from your own garden. This genus also includes pumpkin and many squash.

Luffa gourds are day bloomers as well, with orange flowers. Once they are dried, their skins can be peeled and the remaining sponge be used for a cleaning devise. Many people have these in their bathrooms. There are at least 4 species of Luffa.

Luffa Gourds
Other Species. There are other species of the Cucurbitaceae family that are called gourds. These include the following species: Buffalo or Coyote Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), Bitter Gourds, including Balsam Apple, Balsam Pear and Bitter Cucumber (genus Momordica), Wax Gourd (Benincasa hispida), Snake Gourd (genus Tricosanthes), Teasel Gourd (Cucumis dipsaceus), Malabar Gourd, Fig-Leaf Gourd, Angora Gourd (Cucurbita ficifolia), Chayote (Sechium edule) and Turks Turban (Curcurbita maxima).

Tree Gourds or calabash are not a member of the Cucurbitaceae family. There are two species of tree gourds: Crescentia cujete and Crescentia alata.

Growing Gourds

Gourds will grow in most places and are very easy to grow. Ornamental gourds have a shorter growing season and hardshell gourds a longer season. In general gourds like full sun (at least 6 hours per day), slightly acid soil and regular watering. It is best to use a good thick layer of mulch to keep the weeds down. Too many weeds can weaken your gourd, making them more susceptible to problem bugs.

Drying Gourds

You should dry your gourds before using them for crafts. Gourds should dry on the vine as long as possible. If cut off the vine too soon they will not completely dry and will rot. Watch the stem. When the stem is brown and dead looking, then it is time to harvest.

Once your gourds are harvested they will need to be cured before use. This will completely dry them, so they can be used for your craft. This process usually takes several months. Let them sit for several months in an out of the way area. If they get wet, or cold, this is alright, and adds to their beauty. When you pick up your gourd and can hear the seeds rattling around inside and it feels light, then it is ready.

Mold!

During the curing process your gourd will mold. The outside will get a coating of mold. This is good. This mold is what gives the gourd its beauty. You will usually want to wash it off before crafting though. Be sure to wear gloves, goggles and a face mask to protect yourself. Remember, safety first!

Gourd Birdhouses

Utilitarian Gourds

Gourds are often used as utilitarian devices such as bowls or bottles. Often art and function are combined to create beautiful utilitarian art. Gourds have been used for thousands of years as musical instruments, bowls, spoons and many other devices. These items are often beautiful and have some ritual significance.

Kitchen

In the kitchen there are so many different items that gourds can be used for. You can make a bottle, a vase, spoon, dipper, basket, utensil holder, bowl, or a number of other projects.

Bird Houses

Commonly the Birdhouse Gourd is used for birdhouses, but there is no rule saying that you can't use other gourds. Apple gourds make nice birdhouses as do many other varieties.

Musical Instruments

There are a number of musical instruments from around the world that use gourds. Here is a small selection of them:

Sitar

Sitar

This is a string instrument that uses a gourd called toomba as a resonating chamber. Sitars are used primarily in the music of India, Pakistan and much of Persia.

Maraca

Many maracas are made from gourds. The dried gourd is filled with seeds or pebbles to give it the musical sound. Commonly heard in Latin American music and found in many children's toy chests.

G

Ready to start your tire garden? The first step is to plan it. There are three steps to planning your garden. Once you have planned it, you can start putting it all together.

The steps:
1. Measure
2. Draw
3. Organize

Measure

First decide where to put your garden. We recommend at least 9 feet wide for two rows of tires. This will give you two rows with space between for a path. Alternatively you can but the tires together, if you can get to them from each side. This later option works well for the folk that like to have their garden right in the middle of the yard.

Now that you know where you want it, measure out the space. You might want to do a rough sketch in the garden so you can be sure you get the measurements are in the right place. Sketch in everything that is currently there, and will stay.

Draw

Take that rough sketch you did and turn it into a scale drawing. You should draw the scale to 1 inch = 4 feet. If you are using semi-truck tires, they are about 40" wide. A quarter is about 15/16th of an inch wide. So the quarter will be a little bigger on your drawing that the tires, but not much.

Be sure to draw in all the features that are currently there, but don't draw in anything you WANT there just yet. If there are fences there, draw them in. This might change what we plant there. Be sure to label which way is north, so we know where the sun hits.

It is a good idea to go out there once in a while and see where the sun hits when. Mark the number of hours different areas of the garden get sun on your map. Again, this will effect what we plant there.

Now is the time to add what we want there. Have some quarters ready. Lay them out on your paper. This will show you about how many tires you can fit where. You can also re-arrange them until you get them the way you want them, without worrying about erasing things. You should have about 36 inches for your path. This will give you space to get a wheel barrow down and then turn it around.

Since your quarters are a little bigger than scale (about 45 inches to scale), you may find you have a little more space than you thought, but for most gardens this will not be much. You also want to draw in a couple of inches space, because the tires will not fit as snugly up next to each other as quarters do, so you really only have a difference of 2-3 inches per quarter. If your garden is larger than about 15 tires in a row, you might consider using paper cutout at .9 inches diameter.

Once you have it all set the way you like it, it is time to draw in the tires. Remember that the quarters are a little bigger than scale tires. You should also measure the tires you have collected to make sure they are about 40 inches in diameter. Once you have verified that, draw them to scale, leaving a couple inches between each tire. If you don't care about it being perfectly to scale, you can use the quarters to draw around, otherwise use a compass.

Organize

Now that the garden is drawn, we need to start saying what we are putting where. Think about succession planting, companion planting, and other organic techniques that cut down on herbicide/pesticide use as well as get you more food in your space.

Number each tire. I like to start at one end of a row and number left to right, top to bottom, just like you read.

Take another paper (or a spreadsheet). On the top put the following headers:
Tire Number
Plant Name
Plant Date
Harvest Date

Under tire number you will put the tire you are planting in. Since you kept track of how much sun hit which spot when and you researched what plants do well living together, you can start planning out what goes where. For each tire, keep a full list of what you will plant when and when you will harvest it. This allows us to do succession planting as well. Lets take an example.

We have a space with 3 rows of 5 tires, in full sun The three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) is a good crop for here. So, we get some good sweet corn, various beans and various squash. We know that we want to plant the corn a few weeks before the beans, this will give it time to grow, and act as the support for the beans. The squash will be planted in the neighboring tires.

Some plants (corn) you need to pick fairly close to the harvest date. Others, like your lettuce and peas, you can keep harvesting throughout. The harvest date is "maturity" based on what the package says under "days to harvest" or whatever it says. This just gives you an idea of when you should be out there looking to pick them, and when you will be able to reclaim the space for another crop.

We have a long growing season here, so we start early. If you cannot start as early, you may not be able to get two crops in a single space, but play with it, and you might find out you can. I would probably like to do another late season crop as well. Peas, Lettuce, Carrots, Spinach, etc all do well with a late summer crop. You can also plant your seeds for one crop before the other crop is harvested. You have a week or two before germination, so you can overlap slightly, if harvesting will not disturb your seedlings. This would not be good with carrots, but planting shade loving lettuce around your about to be harvested corn is a good idea.

You may want to stagger your planting and harvesting more as well. If you plant your carrots every week, you will have fresh carrots for a longer period.

As we eat, we get lots of food scraps. We can run these down the garbage disposal, but that wastes water and is noisy. We can toss them in the garbage, but then they sit in the land fills. Yes they do degrade quickly, but wouldn't it be better if we could make use of them?

If you have a big yard, you could have a compost pile and put your veggie scraps there, but if you live in a small space, this will not work. You may still want some nice compost to put on your potted plants. They would love it if you did. This is a great fertilizer and makes your flowers feel strong. If you live in an apartment, or just don't want to deal with a large compost bin, may I suggest a worm bin?

Worm Chalet

What is a worm bin?

Well, a worm bin is simply a box that holds your scrap veggies and some worms. The worms will eat your leftovers and turn them into nice rich compost.

But doesn't it stink?
No! A well cared for worm smells like sweet soil. As long as you keep meat and dairy away from the bin they usually have very little odor, and then only a sweet one. Many people keep them under their beds.

What can I put in it?
The love fruits and veggies, but you can also toss in grains such as oatmeal, your used coffee grounds, with paper filter, tea leaves with the bag, and more. You can even put in potato peels and other things that many people keep out of their compost bins because they might grow.

Red Wiggler Worms
Do I need to dig up worms for it?
No. The earthworms you find in your yard are not good for worm bins. Earthworms prefer larger spaces where they can work undisturbed. Your worm bin will be too small for them and get moved around too much. It will also get warmer in there than earthworms like.

Building or Buying a worm bin and worms

This is just an overview article. Please see the links below to get information on how to build your own as well as links to purchase premade worm bins and packages of worms.

Links

Come live with me: How to make and take care of your own neighborhood of worms
Composting with a worm bin

Our namesake is the Tire Garden, so it is fitting that this will be the first article written for the site.

What is a tire garden?

A tire garden is a raised be garden using old automobile tires as the bed walls.

Why tires?

1. They are free. You can walk into any tire store and tell them that you want to take some of their old tires. They have to pay to get them hauled off, they are happy to let you take some away.

2. Tires loose their usefulness once they go bald... what happens with them then? Usually they get piled up somewhere. Sometimes they will get shredded up and turned into asphalt, running tracks, or something else, but not all tires are used. According to the EPA 80.4% of scrap tires are re-used. The remaining 19.6% are piled up or added to landfills. They do not degrade and they make great mosquito breeding areas. Using them in the garden is another way to get rid of them.

3. Raised beds warm up faster in the spring as they are above the frost line and there is more air circulating. With tires you get the black color, which holds the suns rays, so it warms even better.

4. Compaction and drainage. This is true with all raised beds, but since you are not stepping in them, they don't compact. They also drain well. If you leave the walls on, this prevents evaporation allowing you to go longer between waterings.

5. Less bending. If you don't like to bend down, stack the tires 2 or 3 tall, so you bend less. Or you get the really big tractor tires that are 3-4 feet thick!

Too many other reasons to list! If you know some, add a comment.

Are they safe?

Getting the tires.

This part is easy. Just walk into your local tire store and say "Hey, can I haul off some of your scrap tires?" They might look at you funny or say "Why the heck would you want our garbage?" but they will let you have them. If you want big tires, bring a truck and visit a tire store that deals with truck tires. If you want REALLY big tires, bring a big truck and visit a store that deals with that kind of tire. They will most likely be around where big rigs are sold. You may also find them in agricultural areas.

Cleaning the tires.

Get a good cleaner or degreaser. Of course use one that is environmentally friendly! Spray it on the outside of the tire and clean it up really good. Clean the inside as well. Spray it down with the hose till all the cleaner is off.

Preparing the tire.

At this point you have a few choices. You can cut the sidewalls off and turn them inside out. This gives maximum surface space. You can leave them as is and stack them. This gets them higher and keeps the water in better. You can also cut them into pretty flowers. I like to leave them as is and stack them. See the links below for some other ideas. So, basically, the tire was prepared when you got it cleaned.

Layout your garden.

Plan ahead. Measure out your garden. You want your tires to be of uniform size (usually), so figure that will be the width of your bed. Your paths should be about 3 feet wide. This will give you the soil you need to fill the tires and a path big enough for you and your wheelbarrow and still allow you to turn around.

For more on how to plan your layout, read our Tire Garden Planning Article

Setup.

Get all your tires put into place, 1 tire high. Dig about 18 inches down in your path area and place this soil into your tires. If you want the bed hire, fill the first layer with compost or topsoil and add another tire. Leave about 4 inches at the top. This will allow you to add mulch and will keep the soil warmer in the early spring.

Plan and enjoy.

That is it. Now get to work!

Links

Bob's Open Air Mulched Tire Garden
Blooming Tire Planters
A new use for old tires
Used Tires