Tyre & container gardens

Putting what's around you to good use is one of our key principles - that's why you'll see all sorts of containers with food growing in them on Send a Cow farms. Let them inspire you to grow food in all sorts of recycled objects too!

Tyre gardens

One of the simplest ideas and still very effective, tyre gardens are a great way of using waste materials in Africa and the UK. Just create a drainage layer with stones, add soil and compost and plant your seeds or seedlings in the top. Because the tyres are black, they absorb heat and keep the soil warm for your plants. If you've got small tyres you could even cut the top off a water cooler bottle to make a mini-greenhouse. Tyres can also be used to grow potatoes in if you stack them on top of each other and keep in place with some vertical sticks. If you have safety concerns about the metals and chemicals in tyres, you can line the tyre with plastic sheeting or only grow flowers in them.

'Over 40 million tyres are disposed of every year in the UK.'

Cambridge University

Containers - anything goes!

Jerry cans, cracked pots, old vegetable oil drums and large plastic bottles are all used in East Africa to grow plants and saplings in. Most of these can be found around schools too - why not talk to your caretaker and have a challenge to make the most ingenious re-use garden? To make your African Garden really authentic, find a yellow jerry can, wash it out thoroughly, slice it in half long-ways and use the two halves as seed trays on your classroom windowsill. You could also do this with large 6 pint milk bottles or squash containers.

Plastic bags are not generally pretty, but they can be made more beautiful if they have flowers and herbs growing in them. African farmers often use small bags to grow seeds and seedlings in, another simple idea to find a use for all the bags we get through in the UK too - you can also turn sturdy shopping bags into mini bag gardens. There are endless ways to re-use containers for growing; some UK schools even grow plants in wellie boots and old shoes! Why not do your best to do something different and email us your best pictures?

If you don’t have access to Vimeo.com to watch videos at school, register for an account on their website at home and then you can download all our videos using the link on the bottom right of each video page.