Tire Gardening

Burt Blades’ mother, in her 90's, finds gardening in her son's tractor tires much easier. The garden plants are higher, easier to
keep watered and weeded.

Tinker Helseth is a Canadian guide and outfitter who will be at the swap meet Saturday, and will give away a free trip to his lodge on Lake of the Woods by drawing.

I was looking at my garden the other day and it looks too small. I love garden fresh vegetables of all kinds, and I know I have to do some work on it. In the past, March and April have demanded a lot from me. It is a time for hunting turkeys and catching walleye, white bass, crappie and black bass. But you can’t have fish stew without tomatoes and potatoes and onions and things grown in the garden. And most of my readers are country folks who know that anything you buy in a grocery store won’t come close to what you grow in your own garden. So this year, I get to thinking that with prices of vegetables rising so much, it might be a good time to haul in some more rich soil and some manure and double the size of my garden, so me and the raccoons and deer and rabbits and squirrels will have more to choose from, and Gloria Jean will have something to keep her busy while she can communicate with nature.

But a fellow visiting my place last week changed my way of thinking about gardening. Burt Blades and his wife Debbie have a different kind of garden, and it works better than mine. He goes out and gets old tractor tires, great big ones, and puts hardware cloth across the bottom, widens the top by cutting off the top side with a sawz-all, and fills it with soil and manure and has the most perfect, weed-free garden I have ever seen. In one of those tires last year he grew enough green beans to can 47 quarts. In others, he grew tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, onions, etc. And every year, he alternates what he grows in each. The lower cupped rim of the huge tires holds water, and allows the soil to stay moist with less watering.

It looks as if I need some great big old tractor tires now. If you have some, call me. I also need a dump truck full of good soil, as the dirt up here on Lightnin Ridge is a little bit thin. I might trade a boat, a coon dog, or something of that sort, or maybe some of Gloria Jeans antique dishes if you can bring the dirt when she is in town sometime. And maybe what we ought to do is get a bunch of these tractor tire gardens going and do some trading of produce as well. I might be willing to part with some tomatoes and cucumbers and fish for some good roastin’ ears. The doggone coon and her young ones get into my corn each year and I haven’t got the heart to shoot her until her babies grow up, and by that time she has always moved to some other ridge.

Folks know how I view the tire situation in our country. Our government has required that everyone pay several dollars just to get rid of old tires. So there are many who just keep those old tires and throw them in our rivers. Along many of the rivers I float, you can count 30 or 40 tires in a day. What we should do is pay for old tires and recycle them to produce both oil and rubber. But we don’t, we aren’t that advanced yet. Maybe someday we’ll get there, and if we do there will be thousands of dollars worth of tires in our Ozark Rivers to be retrieved. But if you have big tractor tires, I am in the market for some and I am thinking that I have some good things to trade, maybe some coon meat about the middle of the summer.

That earthquake this week was awful, and now we will face the cost of our progress as nuclear radiation will be released to kill many more people. But it is unstoppable… our numbers, and our unquenchable demand for our resources, our destruction of our forests and waterways. We are all a part of it, and we cannot stop the avalanche we have started. Someday our country will face a similar catastrophe. At such a time, it will be nice to be as far away and as independent as possible. It is human greed that causes men to be so dependent, to destroy that around him which keeps him alive. We have to have nuclear power I suppose, but it is like all the things God gave us to make life better… mankind finds a way to destroy himself by using good things in such horrible ways. I don’t know if the Creator sends earthquakes, tornadoes, famine and pestilence. Maybe we bring those things on ourselves by what we do to the earth. It is more than I can understand, I have no answers. Every time I buy a tank of gas, I know I am part of the problem too.

As expensive as gas is getting, I am always interested when my neighbor Don Jones talks about using water and baking soda beneath the hood of my pick-up to create hydrogen to supplement gas fuel. He says he makes his own systems, and can see to it my pickup gets 25 miles to the gallon, whereas now it only gets about 18. Don will be at our swap meet next Saturday to show people how it is done, and his website, if you are interested, and if you can understand that kind of technical stuff, is www.ozarksfreefuel.com.

Uncle Norten told me he is coming to our swap meet with several of his handmade sassafras boat paddles, and the Iconium Country Store folks are coming. They have some of the most beautiful outdoor stuff you have ever seen, lamps and knives and blankets and tables, and all sorts of art. I have written about that store before, one of my favorite places in the Ozarks.

Tinker Helseth will be here this week and I am going to show him some Ozark fishing if we just get some decent weather. This morning there was a white coat of snow up here on Lightnin Ridge, and the river was up. Tinker is anxious to give away that fishing trip for two, to Lake of the Woods, Ontario, at our swap meet. You can hear him talking about Canada this coming Friday morning on my radio program, from Stockton Lake, at 8:30 a.m. Many of you in western Missouri can pick that up on 107.7 f.m.
Another thing I didn’t mention last week is a small lure company just getting started that has some of the best looking small and large spinner baits I have ever seen. A couple of other companies will have new lures, but then there are all those tables with antique lures too. I just found out one carver is bringing a full sized wooden Indian he carved, for sale.

I am busy making my turkey calls, and don’t forget that Myron Nixon and I are working on an old-fashioned wooden johnboat we hope to finish at the swap meet. I intend to float that johnboat down the river this summer and revert back to my boyhood, using the same fishing gear I used back then. Our swap meet is for old-timers, and should be a lot of fun, held at the Brighton Assembly of God Church at Brighton, Mo, 17 miles north of Springfield on highway 13. Call my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins to get information about it. Her number is 417-777-5227.

More information and directions can be gained from my website, www.larrydablemont outdoors.blogspot.com. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.