Even though we didn’t really have a backyard garden at any of the homes we have rented or owned we usually had a little garden of some sort, mostly flowers but the odd tomato plant.

I have always had plants indoors, some of which did quite well outdoors during the heat of summer. My wife on the other hand had one plant when I met here and it was a gift from her mother.

Now we are learning how to have a garden that is bigger than anything we have attempted to this point in our lives.

Container Gardening

I wish we had learned more earlier because now we know we could have gardened in large flower pots and other containers. This way we could have moved them to the best places for them as the summer moved forward and sunny areas became shaded areas.

We just didn’t really think of having a container garden.

Our original plan to dig a garden this year was coming along fine until a close friend of my wife, who has show gardens, told us that it took her ten years to realize that container or even raised beds for gardening were so much easier to maintain.

That started me thinking about my health and how much more I would get done if I wasn’t tired so easily because of heart issues. She saved us a ton of work that we don’t need to do. Thanks Judy.

So our plans have been tossed out the window and a new plan is brewing. Just in time I might add as the snow that just one week about was still over two feet deep in our backayard is all but gone and we would have been digging.

We just learned how to have a garden in our backyard that will cost us less to create and require less bending and lifting.

The fact that I have been out of commission for just over 4 years with health problems has me more excited than a little kid at Christmas.

Learning to be a backyard gardener even has a few of my guitar playing friends interested. I had one guitar friend that was going to prepare our garden for us but now she is looking at doing the same thing.

We currently have a couple of planters that are about 10 feet long by 3 feet wide and about 3 feet deep with an edge I can sit on to work. Those will be the same type planter we will use in other parts of our yard for both flowers and vegetables.

I plan to document what I do and learn in a journal and on this site so others can learn how to have a garden in their backyard without all the trial and error we were going to be going through.