Gardening

So, I have come to terms with the fact that we are going to probably be in this cheap apartment for a while.  With that said, I am giving a lot of thought to making myself happier here.  I'm looking in to making a nice container garden at my back door and what it will take to do that. 

I would like to start acquiring the materials to do this now, since most of it will be going on sale and make it more feasible for me to do.  Plus breaking the project apart in to separate little steps will make it easier financially too!  Breaking things up into smaller pieces is always a good thing!

So this is the space I am working with.  To the left you can see my two tomato plants that I am growing this year.  The space is about 34" wide by 50" deep. In addition to that, across the back, right next to the house is a ledge of concrete from the footer of the house that is about 6" wide, but is not entirely flat.  I want to take the new bed to the edge of the house, which will go right up against where my tomatoes currently are, but I can plant them farther out next year.  The bed will come just to the end of the concrete slab that is already there.

This is a picture of the entire area outside my back door.  The trellis and poles of the little deck on the right side I intend to make use of next year with some larger pots and pole beans.  I'm not sure about the area under the deck, just that I want it to be more usable.  I think that will be easier with the weed eater fixed because there is some kind of mutant weed in there that has really fat sturdy stalks.  And it's shady... I think I just want the whole area to be more attractive, and just feel like a special place for me.

This is the view of my back yard, which is to the left in the other pictures (in the bottom of the frame, you can see the tops of my tomato plants). It is really quite large and very nice and serene.  I think I would spend more time outside and enjoying myself and feeling more grounded if the space were nicer.  There are nice bones here to work with, I just gotta do it.

I need to take a trip down to the end of the back yard and figure out how to get down in to the creek back there. I know that there are probably some rocks back there that I can use to edge it with, and that would be free, but I am not sure it is the look I want.  I am thinking more along the lines of this edger I found at Lowe's for $1.46 each.  I figure I will need 9 of them, 10 just to be sure I have what I need.

 

I'll also need to get some landscaping fabric, but since I don't plan on actually planting in the ground, I think I can use some black plastic, which I already have, to keep pesky grass from growing up between my planters.  The next step is to find the planters I want to use and get them situated in there.  I really want to to a kind of tiered look, with larger pots up next to the house in the back and work out to smaller pots, with a smooth river rock poured around the base of the pots.  

There are some inherent problems with using big pots.  Number one, they are freaking heavy!  No matter how you slice it, once the containers are filled, they are so heavy and hard to move, and if I take the time to pick out things I like and enjoy being around, when we eventually move, I am going to want to take them with me.  The second thing is, they take a lot of material to fill.  I think probably the best bet for regular plants in them is to use a cinderblock or two to take up some of the space in there, maybe putting a plank on top of it to keep from having to fill the entire space with dirt or rocks and saving some on the weight factor.  

I want to use at least one big galvanized tub, like these, at the back of my little garden, and yes, I am aware that I probably won't get to take it with me when we end up moving.  I don't know where to find these metal containers though, I really kind of lucked up on finding this picture on the internet.  I wonder if they have them at the tractor supply store or something.  I also don't want to spend a whole bunch on them either.  So, if I have a big one of these at the back, and to the far left of it I plant a dwarf evergreen in another big pot, then I can size down my pots toward the front of the space and put a whole variety of things in them.  I want to grow a whole bunch of things here.  I am going to have a whole wish list of seeds and seedlings!  I can't wait.  The more I think about it, the more excited I get!  I don't think I realized exactly how much I missed having my own little space until just this moment!