"Cat Tracks" Raised Garden Beds

Cat Tracks Raised Garden Beds FARM HOME Miscellaneous Old Cat Challenger rubber tracks laid on their sides and filled with dirt make low-cost raised garden beds says John Hull of Dow Ill He made 2 oval-shaped “Cat track” gardens each measuring 3 ft wide by 12 ft long and 2 1/2 ft high They’re spaced about 5 ft apart and set on the concrete floor of an old corn crib The rubber on each track is about 3 in thick and is embedded with steel mesh He put about 4 in of gravel at the bottom of each garden plot for drainage then filled them with dirt mixing 4 in of compost into the top layer “I got the tracks free from a neighbor who is an excavator He brought them to my place and left them in my driveway and I used a loader tractor to drag them into place ” says Hull All that dirt puts a lot of pressure on the tracks so to keep them from bulging outward Hull first used 2 by 4’s to build an H-shaped framework for each track which he slipped inside as bracing He drilled 1/4-in holes through the track every 3 ft or so and then bolted the framework to it He also used 9-ga wire to reinforce the framework using a crowbar to twist the wires together “It turned out to be more of a job than I thought but it was worth the effort because I have a bad back ” says Hull who set up the truck garden last fall “I grew strawberries in one set of tracks and asparagus in the other “I formed the tracks into an oval shape instead of round because I wanted to be able to reach across from either side to the middle I was surprised how hard it was to drill holes through the rubber tracks but that’s because they’re full of steel – like a radial car tire but about 1 000 times worse ” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup John Hull 25799 Bethel Lane Dow Ill 62022 ph 618 885-5372; edwhull@gmail com

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