We live in the Pacific Northwest. I have never been afraid
to grow flowers or
get in the dirt and weed. I used to spend two hours a day, pruning and watering petunias and roses. What has scared me is trying to grow my own food. In the past we have had some very weak strawberry and tomato plants that hardly produced anything. With some very weak attempts in the past couple of
years to produce any kind of garden, I think we are really ready to dig in.
I am REALLY inspired to do my own garden now. We are consuming so many fruits and vegetables now that we’ve got to try to grow some of them. I said to Jonathan the other day, ‘I am not afraid to fail now. I’d rather do it and fail then not do it at all.’
Not one part of our yard is flat except the SMALL patio area. Do we do a raised bed? Multiple raised bed
s? Do we do container gardening? Should we mount containers? Do we sacrifice more lawn for a garden? Do we sacrifice flower garden space for vegetables? Questions, questions, questions we have. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed,” so, we’d LOVE your advice. We love learning from others. We have so much to learn.
Also using your fence to grow flowers and fruits and veggies is a space saver. When we lived in an apt in the Portland area, our ground level postage stamp size patio was big enough only for a table and 2 chairs. What we did was use hanging baskets grom the ceiling and all across the railing we grew herbs, tomatoes, carrots and flowers. We put my husbands handmade birdhouses in between the plants. We were able to grow more plants in wine barrels just outside our kitchen window and in front of the patio. You could see our “hanging” garden from the street and people would come up and take pictures of it. One day we had a scare when a police officer came up and took pictures!
Thanks for the great tips!!
Maybe weigh out which one would cost more to upkeep vs. what you would be getting back. Besides seeing the fruit of your labor, what do you get from the lawn? I have moss, it would be an easy choice 🙂
Definitely cut back on flowers (grow them in containers) as to the lawn is it used for play? Do you have a pet that goes outside? Perhaps cutting back a portion of the lawn would be the way to go?
We don’t have pets, and our lawn is so small, adding more beds wouldn’t be wise, but containers are a great idea. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t know how to give counsel in this area but I do have some feedback 🙂 I would say yes to the following two questions: Do we sacrifice more lawn for a garden? Do we sacrifice flower garden space for vegetables? I say yes to both of those because you would be sacrificing the lawn and flowers for something that will be yielding a return. Also, you have some great resources at your finger tips that can give great input. I love you sister!!
That’s good feedback. I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep if we replaced some plants with veggies. But lawn? LAWN?! Yeah, I can see the benefit.