Be Flexible

 Gardening....there are many different ways to do it! It depends on many different factors. You just have to do what works best with what you have. 

Where I live, we have rocky, hard clay soil. We have tired to till and plant a garden- not much success. We have tried to bring in some good would to mix with ours. We have spent lots of time pulling rocks out of the garden. It was so challenging that we didn't even bother with a garden for a year or so here and there. 

Then my husband built me several raised beds- 2 foot by 4 foot long. We found more success this way of gardening. And more boxes were built. The garden evolved. In order to make longer rows for some of our crops he built me some boxes using 2x12's. These boxes starting breaking down and falling apart so my husband has been changing them out- using sheets of tin - cutting them in half and framing with with 2x4's and making me 2 foot wide boxes and 8 feet long. We also bought some metal garden boxes - some from Amazon. And some from Home Depot.  These 2 are my favorites. 

A year or so ago we ended up realizing we needed to give our chickens more space. The 1/3 of the back yard that they were using had lost all the grass do to the drought. So we fenced out garden and gave the chickens 2/3rds of the yard. This gave my garden a more defined area. And I just love it! But because of this it has also called for a few changes to make the area work better. So I have had to shovel dirt out of the old boxes and replace the boxes and fill them up. I have had to move a few of our boxes. There has been a lot of work to be done but it will all be well worth it once it is all done. 

 

When you begin to create a garden space in your yard you have no idea what you are working with so you have to figure out what works best for your space. This means that you may have to change your plans up to make your space work better for you. Be flexible. All the work will be worth it in the end. 

*I will say to be aware - not all metal garden boxes are created equally. We bought one that I am not very happy with at all. It does not keep it's shape and had a metal bar going across it - under the soil - makes it hard to till it. And even with the bar - it lost it's shape. This is the reason I have shared the bought metal garden boxes we have been happy with. Thankfully I had won a Sunnydaze brand metal garden box from a gardening club nearby so I knew I liked their products. 

 a photo of the metal garden box that we bought off of Amazon before I found the brand name on the metal garden box that I won - that I knew was a good quality one. I was so disappointed in this one. I still use it but look at the shape of it...ugh...