Is Gardening With Tires Bad For The Environment?

I have read many articles that suggest using old tires for container gardening. My father is considering making a vegetable garden out of tires. Does the tire pollute the soil and there fore the vegetables? I it is bad to burn tires.. Should I be concerned about the quality of the vegetables? Have you seen any scientific evidence about this topic? Or environmental tests?
 
Burning tires produces extremely toxic vapors; IF you get a tire to start to burn, it won't be stopped by normal means until the fuel is exhausted. Google 'tire fires' and you will see where it took YEARS for tire disposal yards to stop burning.

They now use ground up tires in certain types of asphalt applications and other resurfacing techniques.

As far as gardening with tires: generally the 'chemicals' used to make tires cannot be leached out into your soil. Be careful you don't create a 'mold zone' using tires-make sure you have proper drainage below your tire garden.

We used tires one year to do a multi-tiered potato garden and it worked pretty good, we had potatoes planted and growing in 4 different layers of tires. Harvest one tire crop, then the next, etc...

It's just a cumbersome process.
 
I have read many articles that suggest using old tires for container gardening. My father is considering making a vegetable garden out of tires. Does the tire pollute the soil and there fore the vegetables? I it is bad to burn tires.. Should I be concerned about the quality of the vegetables? Have you seen any scientific evidence about this topic? Or environmental tests?

My worry would be any carcinogens built up in the tire (among other things). I would be wary about planting things I'm going to eventually eat, in a tire. Just sounds weird to even type that :confused:
 
Tires stink. I woudn't want to deal with them in a garden in the first place for that reason, but I would be more concerned about what @Brian Kurkjian wrote. The stuff we drive through....

Railroad ties are obviously not good for the soil. What would you think of cement blocks instead? They are so much more versatile and offer interesting planting plans.
 
Tires stink. I woudn't want to deal with them in a garden in the first place for that reason, but I would be more concerned about what @Brian Kurkjian wrote. The stuff we drive through....

Railroad ties are obviously not good for the soil. What would you think of cement blocks instead? They are so much more versatile and offer interesting planting plans.

Although it doesn't mean that there aren't issues with cemented material for planting, I've never heard of any. Cinder blocks among other types of cemented blocks/pots could prove to be a very artistic way to plant vegetables or whatever.
 
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