Last week I gave you a garden tour. I was telling you that I wasn’t happy with this area…
I told you how the tiller wasn’t working, and we were having a bugger of a time making it work. We don’t have it figured out still.
We have not planted the garden.
Rick and I finally decided to plant the seedlings in containers. In the photo below, I’m just getting started. I already had the containers. It was so windy. The containers just blew over.
It’s not my ideal but here we are. We thought we would get the garden tilled or put the raised beds in, and then replant them again.
I got busy and drew something out…
I really liked this idea. I’d take the flower garden out and only have the vegetable garden. I could move some of the flower plants and kill the rest off.
We’d put mulch down around the raised beds. Oh, it would look lovely.
I picked out these 12 x 4 x 1 1/2…You can find them HERE.
I liked these round raised beds for zucchini plants. You can find them HERE.
I loved this for the archway between the two raised beds. You can find it HERE.
I was kind of excited. It looked like we could get it all for $220. That seemed reasonable. We’d have room for the tomatoes, pole beans, peppers and zucchini that we wanted. I showed it to Rick and he was on board.
Then I read your blog comments…I had a great variety of comments. I read each and every comment. The comments that resonated with me the most were the ones that talked about time, container gardens, and farmers’ markets.
I have been struggling this month to handle everything that’s on my plate. The grandchildren are getting older and are only going to have more and more things going on. Next year, Gannon and Carver won’t be on the same ball team. Eli and Emmett will likely play ball. It’s more and more.
Plus, Rick and I want to go finishing more often. He keeps trying to get me to learn to play golf, and I’m tempted.
Where in the world do we have room for gardening??
Then I figured out that the $220 I figured the cost would be, doesn’t include those two shepherd hooks I wanted. It doesn’t include the two extra hanging baskets, and it doesn’t include any of the dirt I would need to fill the raised beds.
We aren’t far away from Farmers’ Markets…and if we decided we want to make salsa we can always go to the Amish community 30 minutes south of us and get a large batch of tomatoes.
So…at least for this year, we came to the decision…no garden. It will just be the containers we planted. Whew. I feel so much better. Thanks, blog readers, for helping me come to a decision on all of this. If we don’t like it this year…we can always change our minds, but I highly doubt we will.
This sounds like a great decision, we have a farmers market on Wed & Saturdays and then 3 growers have veggie stands open all week. We use this option vs a personal garden and it works well for us. Enjoy those grand kids and I do hope you get out fishing more with Rick.
I loved golfing, absolutely loved it. Please try it and go fishing more too. Life is short and you can visit vegetable markets anytime. Enjoy life.
That sounds like a god plan! You’ll have access to the fresh veggies you want but can easily scale back when you need to . With just two of us at home now we gave up gardening and don’t miss the work!
Do what brings you joy.
I always enjoyed your gardening blogs and learned a few things from them, but sure understand why you made the decision. I haven’t had a garden in many, many years. I often get produce from a neighbor and my sister. I had a tomato plant a few years ago but my husband wanted to plant something else where it was planted so I had to give up my yummy tomatoes. Have some good times playing, watching grands, and relaxing.
Jo, I’m so glad you’re putting relationships first and not trying to make something work just out of “it’s the way it’s always been” mentality. Get out and have a great time with Rick and the kids…and Farmer’s Markets are a great date spot!
Great decision for this year. If you do decide on a raised bed I would go for the ones that are a little higher. I have both the 1 foot and 2 foot. I prefer the taller ones for most anything. With having back and knee issues I find it easier gardening with the taller ones.
I came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that it was cheaper and easier to go to the farmers market. Living in a larger city there are a couple of choices nearby depending on what day it is. I started golfing about 10 years ago and love, love, live it. Not easy, takes practice but I enjoy golfing with my husband. Go for it!
Great idea for this year. I purchased two 4×8 x 2ft high beds. Much better idea. 12ft wooden he really long. I watched a video about filling them. Best to start them in the fall, tree branches in the bottom, then some leaves, compost, we used horse manure as we have horses, then soil. With the soil you either mix peat moss or the coconut husk stuff that expands. That way it’s not nearly as much soil. They are great to plant and easier to weed. Good luck but why not take a summer off and leave you more time to do other things.
Jo, years ago I had back surgery & that was the summer I planted grass seed where the garden plot was. Best decision I ever made. Farmers Market allows me to buy the exact quantity of produce that I will use, and not have an enormous over abundance going to spoil. (Which sometimes happened with my garden.) Farmers Markets are sometimes like garage sales, you don’t always find what you need, but there can be unexpected gems awaiting for you. Plus you are never going to say, I wish I weeded more, instead of doing family outings. Good choice you made!
You won’t regret spending the time on yourself, family and friends. Had to quit several years ago. Missed the canning and my own produce, but learned to use markets and generous neighbors. I even gave my jars to sweet friend and neighbor, who generously brings several back each year, filled with her hard work and generosity.
Gardening does take a LOT of time. We started this year by adding a raised bed in my Veg Garden which meant that the fence (deer are bad here) needed to be moved out, which meant the grass needed to be dug up, only all that happened in theOpposite order, Dig grass move fence add a raised bed. I had put garden cloth down to keep the weeds out, and then mulch so that needed to be raked up, and the cloth laid down around them BC it was so close, I had to dig out 2 of the beds I had to move them…. talk about hard work! So I also bought 4 bags of sand to add to the raised beds, and then mulch but I hit a jackpot of broken bags that I bought for 1.50 each. We also had a week trip planed and paid for in the middle of that. So when we came home I spent every spare min trying to get it done. w all the rain we have had, it has hardly been planted. I did get 6 tomato plants in and some green beans. If I had to depend on a garden to eat I would die.
Sounds like you now have a plan for this more in tune with your life now. As you said next year you can garden again if you want to. You may decide the choice though is not to garden or not garden, but there is a third option also garden in a new way. Perhaps your garden could be a one crop option that makes memories with the grandkids such as only grow watermelon or only grow pumpkins for Halloween Jack O’Lanterns.