by Texas Homesteader ~
A few months ago RancherMan & I joined my parents for a quick dinner at a local restaurant. On the sidewalk outside the restaurant was a cute planter. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a small, thick tire that was painted & then planted.
RancherMan said it was probably a riding lawn mower or golf cart tire. I loved it! Heck you always wonder what to do with an old tire anyway. And their disposal is always an issue.
Plus I often worry that planters that you buy just can’t hold up to the rough Texas weather year after year. Spring hail storms can render that cute ceramic planter useless in short order!
These repurposed-tire planters seemed to be the best of both worlds – interesting looks, very durable and using something previously wasted. I decided to give it a try.
But I didn’t have an old lawn mower tire and I really didn’t want to buy a new one. It seems like such a waste of resources to buy a perfectly good usable tire & paint it!
Then one day RancherMan was chatting with the local small-engine repairman and mentioned that we’d take an old tire off his hands if he had one laying around. Come to find out, he DID! And he was oh-so-happy for us to haul it away for him.
Although it wasn’t quite as tall as the one I’d seen before, it should still do the trick nicely.
I’m tellin’ ya, you know it’s true love when your honey comes home with a ‘gift’ for you & that gift is a dirty old used lawn mower tire! But I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty excited. LOL.
Prepare Tire For Painting
First I needed to clean the grime off of that old tire. I used a galvanized tub, water from my rain barrel, a tiny squirt of grease-cutting dish soap, a hefty dose of baking soda and a stiff brush. That old tire cleaned up in no time.
Then for some reason my camera malfunctioned. So I don’t have several of the procedural photos to show you. Luckily it’s pretty easy to describe.
I needed the planting side enlarged. So I carefully took a good sharp knife and cut out a ring of the center from one side of the tire. Enlarging the hole was easy.
There was a raised circle on the side of the tire that I was able to use as a guide. (I left the flip side intact.) This will open up the planting top a little more.
After the tire was clean and the center removed from one side, I placed it on the hay fork of the tractor. Rustoleum Hammered Copper spray paint was the color I chose to paint it.
I love this color! I sprayed on several coats and let them dry thoroughly between each coat.
Place Your new Planter In Its New Location
After it dried it was time to place it in my front ‘flower bed’. I cleared and leveled a spot and placed the planter in the location I wanted. Now I needed dirt to fill it. Hummmm….
I have some container mix soil that I’ve purchased. But I want this planter to hold a lavender plant. So I went out to the pasture and scooped up some sand and mixed just a little planting mix so that the soil was mostly sandy.
Then I planted my tiny little lavender. Isn’t it cute?? It won’t be long before it grows & adorns our home with the fragrant blooms of lavender. (breathes deeply…) I can’t wait.
That’s all there is to it. I really love this planter! It was easy to make. Plus it’s not too bold, but adds a little splash of color to my flowerbed.
And a raised planter should help my little lavender plant since they really don’t like to have soggy feet. Yea!
Now as the lavender grows and fills out, it will continue to hide this cut out center. But the pretty hammered copper colored tire planter will still be visible. Oh yeah, I likey!
So if you need a raised planter that can withstand what Mother Nature doles out whether sun or hailstorms, give this cute idea a try. I love the way mine turned out. And heck, it’s practically indestructible!
~TxH~
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Like your tire border. It is a good way to get rid of a used tire. When the kids were small we had a large tractor tire that we filled with sand for a sandbox. They enjoyed playing in it a lot.
I used to take cloth bags to the store every time, but a couple of years ago a cashier in Walmart said to me how do I know you didn’t just pick this bag up and are stealing it. I said because it says CVS on it. I stopped using cloth for a while after that and am just getting back into it, but I only use bags that have logos from places that are not store, like the hospital and clinic. I wish I had complained about that cashier. I don’t usually do that, but I think that should have been the time.
My dad used a large tractor tire filled with sand for my son when he was a toddler, Cynthia. (sweet memories!) I’m shocked at your treatment at Walmart! I know anything out of the norm has to be looked at by corporate America because crooked people will capitalize on anything. (dishonest people suck & ruin it for everyone!) I’ve felt the following eye on me throughout the decades I’ve been using non-single-use-plastic shopping habits. I’ve always felt it was unfortunate that they had to keep the watchful eye for crooks, but since I wasn’t the bad guys they were watching for there was nothing to see. How I wish dishonesty was nary an issue!
I have small tires that I had saved and painted ( paint using OOPS paint) that came off our garden wagon. I do plan on hanging them with chain and then planting them up with small – root flowers.
I did have a large tractor tire but grand daughter wanted it to plant things in so we hauled it out to her in the truck as it was too large for their van. She loves her little; well big, tire planter.
Something that large I also provided empty milk cartons, etc. to stuff into the rim so not to as much soil. Don’t really need the dirt inside the rim; especially something so large.
Next year she wants to put a smaller tire inside the larger one and make a 3 tier planter.
Oh, love your planter by the way. :}
Hi, I actually did sort-of the same thing. I hate to throw anything away that might possibly have another purpose. I recently had to purchase new tires for my truck and had these 20″tires to dispose of (I also don’t like to pay for disposal which is by weight here) so I decided to paint them. I painted one turquoise, one purple, one copper and one cerulean. I have several young saplings and trees, so I am using these at the base of some of the smallest to protect them when my husband mows (he accidentally mowed down my cherry trees one day, but they are coming back). The tire protects the trees, adds a nice neat little garden bed at the base and delineates the space nicely. They also add a pop of colour here and there throughout by back yard.
Oh Lord, be careful. You, like one of my SIL’s may end up with “tire art” all over the place before you know it. She has a turtle, some teacups & saucers, she just gave me a hanging swing (not just a tire, it’s made into a swing & kinda fancy, for a tire) for our ‘practice Grand’ that we hung in the shade. There is also a snail and I can’t remember what all, but painted rubber is a theme at her place.
LOL Mrs. Shoes. I don’t think tire art will take over the landscape here. We all have different preferences & tastes of course, but for me this is more appropriately an accent piece and not a theme possibility. (Although, I’d love to get a taller tire, paint it the same & tier with this one – perhaps planting with something that cascades.) But for our landscaping anything more would just be overdone. To each their own, but ‘tire art’ isn’t really the look I’m after here.