The new garden is nothing like the old garden. The old garden was a very large back fenced yard with rock walled raised beds. The new yard, not even close. This is a small, fenced, regular sized lot. Its like a U around the house, with wood privacy fence on the sides, and metal fencing in the back.
The nice thing is the back butts up to a green belt area. My understanding is this area will not be built on, in part because its not all that wide nor deep. You can easily hear the neighbors on the other side of the greenbelt.
But what this design also means is the sides of the house, with the wood privacy fence do not get a lot of sunlight. There’s enough sun to grow grass, and as the area opens to the back yard there is a lot more sun. So in the back area, even along the side fence line there is enough sun to plant and probably grow quite a big. The back area with the metal fence has what wild animals we get back there. So far we have seen deer and some rabbits. Both potential veggie harvesters.
But that’s okay. I like being able to look at the deer and animals we get. We have does and fawns, though I have seen a buck elsewhere in the community.
But the yard is easily large enough for some plants and the dogs. Actually in many ways its a great size for the dogs. Its large enough for them to run in, but not so large its tough to catch them, provided the gates are closed.
A couple of weeks ago a friend came over and helped get plants into the ground. So the fruit trees and roses we brought with us now have permanent homes instead of just living in pots. Now not everything ended up in the ground. We still have quite a few large pots with plants in them.
Even though we don’t have as much yard are as before its still possible to garden. Since I do have less room, and I expect we will have more work to do in the garden before long, I have decided to make use of fabric pots.
Now if you are wondering what fabric pots are, they are just that. Instead of pots being made out of some sort of hard material – plastic, metal, ceramic, etc., these are like thick felt material. When not in use they fold flat, or at least pretty flat. They come in a variety of sizes. And, as you can see, they have handles on them so you can pick them up and move them around.
These are not very large pots, just five gallon. If you look online you can see their size, not large. These five were filled from left over potting mix from the in ground plantings. That’s also why they are not filled to the brim with dirt.
Where these are easy to use, and a good temporary solution they do have drawbacks. They are cloth (of some sort) so they can dry out easily. Also if you don’t have enough soil in them, they don’t stand up well. They will break down, and can tear (watch out for dog claws!). If you are growing something like carrots, beets, or potatoes (anything that grows below ground) you need to check how tall these stand so you get something deep enough. I wouldn’t want to grow potatoes in this small of a fabric pot, but a larger size might work.
So I’m trying them out to see how they do. I’ll keep you posted.