Monday, April 27, 2009

Garden Project Report #8 - Recycling At Its Best

Isn't it great when you discover that you did something right without knowing it until later down the road? Yesterday was one of those days. When deciding on where to put the Backyard Botanical Garden, we walked all around discussing this place or that to finally decided to put it here, the back right corner of the yard fence.


The garden has 64 square feet of planting area, but naturally, we need more planting area for everything we want to plant, specifically hubby wants a lot of tomato bushes. Here is where some recycling comes in: we have empty molasses tubs -- molasses is a cattle feed supplement. I drilled some holes in the tub bottoms. We next had to answer where to put them and how to protect them from Maggie, Luc's lady friend. Maggie loves to dig and destroy all plant life except rose bushes.

It came to me that we had to fence off the tubs, but then I needed to get in and out without a lot of effort, i.e., conveniently. It was then that I realized there was a gate in the corner -- this gate has been in that corner for 27 years and never used. The aha! moment came with the discovery of the gate and the realization that we inadvertently placed the garden just a few feet from the gate, or in the perfect spot.

As my Dad would say, "Never, ever throw anything away if it can be used again." The recycling materials on hand were empty molasses tubs, used plastic weed protection, used T-posts brought home when Mom and Dad's place sold, Dad's T-post pounder, and left over fencing from other projects. I was suppose to wait to pound in the T-posts until hubby got home from work today but I couldn't. The T-posts are in and ready for the fencing, the weed protection is down, and the tubs in place and filled with "Double Thunder" dirt. We have three tomato plants in the Backyard Garden, but the last two tomato plants will go into the tubs as soon as the fence is complete. It will take a few minutes to attach the fencing material to the T-posts, and we can keep rolling along towards a Gardenville on the Ranch. :D

Until next time, God bless.

2 comments:

Mary-Austin said...

Very cool!! Can never have enough tomatoes!

Rae said...

I am also a gardener so I like hearing about other perspectives on the subject. Thanks for stopping by my blog. RAE*