A couple of year ago (wow, has it really been that long?) I bought some small Birdies garden beds to use as tree planters for a little espalier tree garden, because large sections of my yard are sitting on an excessive amount of rock which isn't very conducive to having anything much grow besides weeds. I planted some marigolds between them, and when the marigolds passed on, I collected the seeds from the ones I most liked, and planted some little bush beans in their place.
I found that having to bend down to pick the beans made me feel older than I actually am very quickly, although I persisted, the plants grew better than anticipated, and they also persisted much longer than anticipated. I got so many beans off them that I couldn't even give that many away at the time, and after I had no more space in the freezer, I eventually just let them go, stopped watering them, collected enough dried beans to plant a lot more in the future, and let the ground level of the garden suffer and die back, because I wasn't going to be bending over that far to deal with it anymore, it was just too hard.
All the trees went into bloom last Spring, along came a Spring windstorm and blew all the blossoms off the trees, and that was the end that that season of fruit... or so I thought. Somehow both my peach trees managed a full load of fruit each, my sugar plum managed to grow 4 plums, and two of my apple trees maintained one apple each. It seemed weird to nurture a single apple on each tree, but I did it anyway and they were both delicious enough to be worth it, or at least I thought so. If nothing else it gave me a taste of what was to come, which was great.
That's where the joy of this garden ended. My dog started getting into the garden and digging and making a mess, and ate my little banana pup. I put the green garden wire around to stop him, and it did, he saw that as a "not allowed in there" and didn't go in there anymore even though he could have jumped over it easily enough. Then I got stuck puppy sitting someone else's dog, and that dog had no issues with jumping the little garden fence and digging things up, and my dog decided that looked like fun and started doing it too, and he kept doing it even after the other dog was gone. I put chicken wire around the garden to keep him out, and that worked for a while, but he eventually figured out how to tear it down, and he also figured out how to tear down the wires supporting the trees. Then a few extreme thunderstorms killed the solar lights and the remaining wires supporting the trees, the dog kept getting in and digging holes, the trees went dormant at the start of winter, and the only thing left growing in the garden was a new little mandarin tree and loads of disappointment.
But I am not so easily defeated.
I decided to get in touch with Birdies Garden Products and ask some questions, which lead to me scouring their website looking at all their different beds, asking more questions, and eventually putting in an order for not just a few new beds, but also for some specific pieces, mostly flat panels, but also some extra specific corner pieces. My goal is to jigsaw puzzle the bed pieces together to create one large non-standard shaped bed to create more raised bed space so I can eliminate the spaces between the trees and grow strawberries under and around them at a height that isn't quite so painful to reach.
The Birdies beds and bits and pieces arrived yesterday. It took me most of the day today to unpack them, and in doing so I realised that one of the beds I'd ordered arrived the wrong colour - my fault, I didn't check the order properly before confirming the purchase, but that's okay, I just ordered another one the right colour and I do have a use for the odd coloured one in another section of the yard that will be done in the further future so it's not a waste, just a change of colour coordination for a different section of the yard in the future. Anyway, there was so much to unpack that among other household chores between boxes, by the time I was done, it was well into the afternoon and I was exhausted (I must say, Birdies doesn't skimp on the quality of their boxes, half the battle with setting up their garden beds is getting the boxes open!) So, I decided to rest for the evening and come here and start a thread telling you all about it, that I can keep updating as I progress in my mission, as it's now too dark to do much more outside and I'm too stuffed to do much more inside other than sit and type.
Excuse the dirt on the walls and the hole in the wall, this is part of my laundry room where the dogs get locked in occasionally when needed. The dog I was puppy sitting didn't like that idea and tried to eat his way out of the room through the wall, and I haven't fixed it yet because, well, it's the laundry, in this town it's actually a miracle there's any internal lining on the laundry walls in the first place.
It'll get fixed one year, and it does get cleaned now and then, but the dogs just muddy it up first chance they get so I don't put too much effort into that too often. And I only just noticed that the walls in my laundry are painted the same colour as the Birdies beds. Weird.
I was planning today to repaint the support posts in the garden, but time got away from me, so I'll have to do that on Monday because rain is forecast for tomorrow, and I'll need a day for everything to dry out after it. I'm going to paint them a brown colour that the paint shop matched to a rusty bit of metal for me, because the reomesh will rust over time and once it does, I'd like the posts and the rust to not stand out against each other too much and look like it's all meant to be that colour. So tomorrow I guess I'll just have to deal with the trees instead whilst I wait, which will mean pruning them all back and transferring them into large pots for safe mobile keeping, as I'm going to have to do that before putting the new garden bed in place because the current ones are in the way of doing that. Then once the garden bed is in place, filled up, and the trees back where they belong, I'll put up the reomesh trellising, and a makeshift gate, and laugh at my dog's disappointment at not being able to get in and dig around in there. After all that, then I can plant my strawberries and just wait for everything to burst into bloom come spring.
But it won't end there, because I'll be jigsaw puzzling my garden beds in the front yard as well after the espalier tree garden is complete, and that will be an even bigger job with even crazier garden bed shapes, so stay tuned for that one.
I found that having to bend down to pick the beans made me feel older than I actually am very quickly, although I persisted, the plants grew better than anticipated, and they also persisted much longer than anticipated. I got so many beans off them that I couldn't even give that many away at the time, and after I had no more space in the freezer, I eventually just let them go, stopped watering them, collected enough dried beans to plant a lot more in the future, and let the ground level of the garden suffer and die back, because I wasn't going to be bending over that far to deal with it anymore, it was just too hard.
All the trees went into bloom last Spring, along came a Spring windstorm and blew all the blossoms off the trees, and that was the end that that season of fruit... or so I thought. Somehow both my peach trees managed a full load of fruit each, my sugar plum managed to grow 4 plums, and two of my apple trees maintained one apple each. It seemed weird to nurture a single apple on each tree, but I did it anyway and they were both delicious enough to be worth it, or at least I thought so. If nothing else it gave me a taste of what was to come, which was great.
That's where the joy of this garden ended. My dog started getting into the garden and digging and making a mess, and ate my little banana pup. I put the green garden wire around to stop him, and it did, he saw that as a "not allowed in there" and didn't go in there anymore even though he could have jumped over it easily enough. Then I got stuck puppy sitting someone else's dog, and that dog had no issues with jumping the little garden fence and digging things up, and my dog decided that looked like fun and started doing it too, and he kept doing it even after the other dog was gone. I put chicken wire around the garden to keep him out, and that worked for a while, but he eventually figured out how to tear it down, and he also figured out how to tear down the wires supporting the trees. Then a few extreme thunderstorms killed the solar lights and the remaining wires supporting the trees, the dog kept getting in and digging holes, the trees went dormant at the start of winter, and the only thing left growing in the garden was a new little mandarin tree and loads of disappointment.
But I am not so easily defeated.
I decided to get in touch with Birdies Garden Products and ask some questions, which lead to me scouring their website looking at all their different beds, asking more questions, and eventually putting in an order for not just a few new beds, but also for some specific pieces, mostly flat panels, but also some extra specific corner pieces. My goal is to jigsaw puzzle the bed pieces together to create one large non-standard shaped bed to create more raised bed space so I can eliminate the spaces between the trees and grow strawberries under and around them at a height that isn't quite so painful to reach.
The Birdies beds and bits and pieces arrived yesterday. It took me most of the day today to unpack them, and in doing so I realised that one of the beds I'd ordered arrived the wrong colour - my fault, I didn't check the order properly before confirming the purchase, but that's okay, I just ordered another one the right colour and I do have a use for the odd coloured one in another section of the yard that will be done in the further future so it's not a waste, just a change of colour coordination for a different section of the yard in the future. Anyway, there was so much to unpack that among other household chores between boxes, by the time I was done, it was well into the afternoon and I was exhausted (I must say, Birdies doesn't skimp on the quality of their boxes, half the battle with setting up their garden beds is getting the boxes open!) So, I decided to rest for the evening and come here and start a thread telling you all about it, that I can keep updating as I progress in my mission, as it's now too dark to do much more outside and I'm too stuffed to do much more inside other than sit and type.
Excuse the dirt on the walls and the hole in the wall, this is part of my laundry room where the dogs get locked in occasionally when needed. The dog I was puppy sitting didn't like that idea and tried to eat his way out of the room through the wall, and I haven't fixed it yet because, well, it's the laundry, in this town it's actually a miracle there's any internal lining on the laundry walls in the first place.
It'll get fixed one year, and it does get cleaned now and then, but the dogs just muddy it up first chance they get so I don't put too much effort into that too often. And I only just noticed that the walls in my laundry are painted the same colour as the Birdies beds. Weird.I was planning today to repaint the support posts in the garden, but time got away from me, so I'll have to do that on Monday because rain is forecast for tomorrow, and I'll need a day for everything to dry out after it. I'm going to paint them a brown colour that the paint shop matched to a rusty bit of metal for me, because the reomesh will rust over time and once it does, I'd like the posts and the rust to not stand out against each other too much and look like it's all meant to be that colour. So tomorrow I guess I'll just have to deal with the trees instead whilst I wait, which will mean pruning them all back and transferring them into large pots for safe mobile keeping, as I'm going to have to do that before putting the new garden bed in place because the current ones are in the way of doing that. Then once the garden bed is in place, filled up, and the trees back where they belong, I'll put up the reomesh trellising, and a makeshift gate, and laugh at my dog's disappointment at not being able to get in and dig around in there. After all that, then I can plant my strawberries and just wait for everything to burst into bloom come spring.
But it won't end there, because I'll be jigsaw puzzling my garden beds in the front yard as well after the espalier tree garden is complete, and that will be an even bigger job with even crazier garden bed shapes, so stay tuned for that one.
If he ever figures out jumping and climbing though, I'm going to have no end of trouble with him!
Worst case scenario, the trees die and I have to buy new ones... that's a cost I don't want but, that's what I get for not thinking of doing this a lot sooner.
