I too live in zone 5 is SE Michigan. This is the first garden in 7 years so this experience is old... I tried tires years ago and found they were great at warming the soil in the spring and keeping it hot in the fall. I was very successful with greens, lettuce, spinach etc. The tomatoes liked it very well until the extreme temps of summer hit. It seemed like I watered constantly but everything fried in temps above 80 in full sun. I am not sure about the chemicals but now that I am trying to grow as organic as possible, I would skip them unless I have good evidence that nothing bad leeches from them. This year I have a 4'x24'x12" "Square Foot" bed and have had an abundance of bush beans (just now pulled some and replanted since they are noticeably slowing down production), just composted the end of the peas, the tomatoes are just starting to come in daily, picked a few nice peppers the past couple days and the corn is starting to set ears. In this small space I have...10 tomato plants (spaced indeterminate then determinate), 16 sweet corn, a ground cherry, 10 peppers, 2 zucchini, 2 bush cucumbers, 45 bush beans, and a sugar baby melon weaved in and out of the plants. Here is a picture I took around the 4th of July. Hop on over to the Square Foot Gardening forum for more information if you are interested. The originator of this method uses 4'x4' beds but I know many who use 2'x? size beds successfully. The best things for me so far using this method (besides the great yield) are 1) I control the soil, 2) I placed 1 50' soaker hose 1' inside both edges of the bed and get excellent water coverage and 3) for me the best thing, it is easy to weed! (the few I get). HTH, Kim

I too have a 425 AWS that I want to put a snow plow on and found out the same thing about the wheel spacers. I was wondering if anyone has experience with AG or Bar tires compared to chains? If they work well I think I may just opt to buy a second set or wheels with a set of AG tires to use instead of chains. This would be an easy swap compared to chains which I hear can be hard to get on/off. some people say that the AG tires are easier on turf for using all season long, but I don't know if this would hold true on a 425AWS since the back wheels will be turning too

Tire recycling sounds good on the surface, but it's masking the real issues. Although there are no standard definitions for the word recycling, I'd prefer not to use it to describe materials that loose quality and value like tires do when allegedly recycled. Reprocessed would be a more fitting term. You cannot turn a tire in to another tire, instead it is ground up and the remains used for various things like garden mulch or fillers to bulk out other materials. Since these secondary products have minimal, if any ability to be processed again, and the rubber itself was allready hard to reprocess as a tire and is now further degraded, once worn out these items will go straight back in to the non-recyclable waste stream. Here they will cause just as much environmental damage as the original tires would have if they were throw away in the first place. Tire recycling is waste taking the scenic route to the landfill. Further still, this reprocessing of tires makes it more economically viable to make this waste as it now has a value, rather than do something useful like reduce the number of tires being made in the first place. The reason the tire industry is working hard to reprocess tires, or as they call it recycle, is because it helps hide the environmental and financial damage they cause when thrown away. Instead of consumers seeing a tire mountain and reading grim statistics about the number of tires thrown away or the damage they cause each year, they can read a nice eco-friendly statement about how X percent of tires are now recycled and that tires are a nice industy. After all, we're not throwing away millions of tons of tires any more, we're now throwing away loads of garden mulch, fillers and asphalt, which will somehow be conveniantly detached from the tire industry. *POP* in a cloud of magic smoke, marketing and a bit of deception, the offending tires are gone! As for turning tires in to asphalt, aparently it does use a lot more tar to bind the mixture, but it also creates a much stronger longer lasting road surface, plus it's more skid resistant and safer. Long term the safety improvements and savings from not having to replace it as soon would make it the sensible choice, but here in the UK, as in many places, road works are contracted out. Why would a contractor spend more money to install a better surface, only to be rewarded with not being called back as soon to replace it?

I saw the thread when using google this way* to search for tires. I'm new to garden web and want to help where I can and learn when I can. Here's what I wrote just to help out anyone who's curious. Maybe this group wants to try it on an old piece of tire they lay in the sun for a year. Here's my opinion. -- Rubber and glycerine - Tire dressing / shine - MSDS shows it's easy to make at home I'm a degreed scientist in chemistry and electronics. Material science is my background. Recently I was curious about what is in tire dressing. Typically it's a small amount of a silicon 1-4% and or glycerine 10-15% the balance is water. Glycerine can be bought nearly anywhere such as a pharmacy . We'll ignore using silicone for this discussion. However there's no reason you could not spray a bit on after or before you being applying this mixture we make using water and glycerine. Silicone does not mix with water or glycerine in my experience. The type used in tire dressing has been modified so as to be miscible (mixable) Since we use 10% glycerine in water you could make 8 oz for literally pennies. I need your help. I'm disabled and it's not easy to just hop in the car and travel to the store. Would a few of you like to try making this inexpensive tire dressing and letting us know how it woks for you? IF you need help once started I'll be here for you. Glycerine is made of carbon mostly. It mixes with water easily. 1 oz in 8 oz of water is about 15 percent. That would make 9 oz. Use 1 oz on the tires and you'll have an 8oz container left for the next use. There's no reason to refrigerated it. It will remain stable. If you're willing let's hear from your experience. If I can do it myself I'll post here what my results are. Don't forget to take photos and even camporee what you made to what you buy. Thanks Andre PS. If you have any interest to copy or make your own product that you feel you pay too much for let me know via a thread called DIY home chemicals I'll help you research how to make it yourself, safely and as close to the original product's performance. The MSDS sheets are the key to finding how to make up your mixture. But occasionally mixing certain liquids and powders are difficult. They sometimes require special methods but nothing that you can't manage in your kitchen or garage. Or outdoors if the liquid is flammable. Here is a link that might be useful: Glycerine tire dressing On Google