Expanding the Garden
A Brief History of My Gardening
2024 marks my second year of gardening. Read more about how it all started in this post. Once again, I’ve learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes but I have also continued to be motivated to keep going and try new things. In 2025 I will be expanding the garden significantly. This time, outside of the backyard!
Our house sits on 10 acres of land. The majority of that land is open space. A blank slate for almost anything. Our neighbors have fruit orchards, horse stables, lavender fields, walnut groves, and more. Dennis dreams of planting vineyards but that would be a very involved endeavor requiring a lot of education and planning. Up until now, I’ve been content gardening in our large backyard. The first year, I planted in raised planters and some in-ground beds. This year, my second year, I assembled a large, portable greenhouse in an attempt to protect my plants from the squirrels and birds who pretty much destroyed everything I planted the first year. Overall, this portable greenhouse has been a great investment; read more in this post. It needed some additional modifications to ensure it was more secure but that was pretty easily accomplished.
These first two years, I kept everything on a pretty small scale but I always wanted to plant more. More of each type of plant and more variety of plants in general. Since Dennis loves a project and has always encouraged my gardening endeavors, he came up with a plan to expand the garden into an area outside of the backyard. I was all for it!
Plans for a Larger Garden Plot
We selected an area that was easily accessible from the backyard and would have plenty of sun. The space is about 50 by 50 feet. It’s huge! Honestly, a bit overwhelming but also exciting when I think about the possibilities.
I decided to move two of the three tall planters from the greenhouse into the new garden areas along with one of the tired planters.
In addition, Dennis built two large raised beds. He found a simple design and I was pretty impressed how quickly he put them together. I’ve also always wanted an arch for climbing plants like cucumbers and peas, so Dennis also built an arch connecting the two raised beds.
All of this fills a small fraction of the space, so I’ll have to figure out what else to plant. We will definitely plant some sunflowers and corn and I’ll place some smaller containers in the space too.
Honestly, I had grand plans to do some fall planting but this year but it feels like we went from summer to winter in an instant. The temperatures have been all over the place and I think I may end up focusing more on planting some more frost-resistant crops in the greenhouse. I feel fortunate to have a more controlled environment to continue gardening into the winter months.
Here’s a video about the new garden space and the current situation inside the greenhouse.
More updates to come! If you’re interested in learning more about some of the products and tools we use for our projects, check out our Dear Diary Country Life LinkTree.
