BACKYARD GARDEN

Last year I successfully grew ONE green bean plant. It produced enough to have green beans as a side for 5 or 6 meals and I was HOOKED on gardening. Then in September, I taught myself how to can food and again I was HOOKED.

I started planning my backyard garden in probably December, while our entire backyard was covered in snow. In Colorado, the growing season is very short, our last frost date this Spring was around the end of May and night time temperatures didn’t get above 50 until the end of June. To combat this, I started Winter Sowing in January/February and started seeds inside around the end of March/beginning of April.

Our backyard isn’t huge, half of it is a playground and the other half is grass. Around the perimeter is a retaining wall and river rocks. I really didn’t want to use our grass area because the boys love playing soccer, playing in the splash pad and just running around. So I started researching different ways to garden in small spaces.

We knew going into this planting season that alot of what we would do would be trial and error. We gave ourselves the freedom to try different ways of growing vegetables, would rejoice in our successes and learn from our mistakes!

I researched and researched and researched. We wanted to be economical with whatever we decided to do and determined that building raised beds was more expensive than was in our budget. So, after alot of reading and planning, we decided that the best use of our space for alot of the smaller crops (herbs, lettuce, onions, strawberries, etc.) would be vertically. We purchased rain gutters from Home Depot after seeing several videos of people using rain gutters to grow strawberries. Right now we are growing strawberries, green onions, herbs and lettuce in the rain gutters.

I also learned alot about growing vegetables upside down. This was really intriguing to me. From what I’ve read, bell peppers and large tomatoes CAN grow upside down, but you have to have buckets and framing that support their weight.

I wanted to see if there was anything that could grow upside down in the rain gutters. I knew they’d need to be lighter in weight, so I’m experimenting with green beans, pepperoncini and jalapeno. They are doing really well so far!

We already had some large planters on top of our retaining wall. I decided to utilize those for green beans and cucumbers. I planted bush beans in two planters and pole beans and cucumbers in the other three. For the pole beans and cucumbers, I created a trellis using tomato cages and twine that they will use to climb as they grow.

For tomatoes, peppers and squash we decided to utilize Grow Bags. These bags come in sizes from 5 gallon to 15+ gallon, they typically come in multipacks and the material is incredibly durable. I like that they have handles and even filled with soil they are pretty easy to move around as the plants grow and they drain really well.

I have learned that they have to be watered more frequently since they are in a container vs. the ground, but other than that my vegetables have been growing really well in them! I’d highly recommend using them if you have a small backyard or even on an apartment balcony!

One thing I did not think through early on was hail. We usually get hail late in the summer, but this year has been a doozy! The first half of June we would have beautiful sunshine in the morning and crazy storms every afternoon. One day we had hail off and on 4 different times.

I ordered this netting and some clips from Amazon and it has literally saved my garden! I tucked it under my containers and then clip it at the top of the fence. I’ve also seen where people just drape it over and secure it with some bricks on each corner.

I’d love to see pictures of your gardens! Drop them in the comments 😍


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