How To Garden Without A Garden Friendly Yard

Want to try your hand at gardening but don't have the yard for it? Well, you may be able to with a little creativity. Here are some tips on how to get started!

This post was updated May 10, 2016

I love to garden. I enjoy growing our own food and enjoying the taste of fresh vegetables and fruit. What if you don't have a great yard to grow your produce in, then what? Well, I'll show you how to tackle gardening without at garden friendly yard.

I’m sure you all think I have gardening in my blood. Maybe I came from a long line of gardeners, raising our own food for the good of the nature, health and well-being.

No.

My Grandpa had a green thumb when it came to flower gardens. Passerby’s would literally stop in the middle of the main street he lived on and look at his flower beds. He was well known in our town.

I tell you, it skipped a generation or two.

My mom does okay, I guess; she can keep flowers alive and well. I cannot. I forget to water. I forget to weed. As long as God takes care of them in the ground, the flowers thrive. If I am responsible to water them inside the house, the poor things don’t stand a chance.

I took up vegetable gardening when we lived on a flat piece of one acre ground. There weren’t many trees and we were in the middle of a field. I had listened to a few friends of mine talking about their gardens and I thought I could at least try it. To my shame, I kind of wondered what the big deal was. I could go buy the produce at the store couldn’t I? They would have everything picked, watered and de-bugged for me to get it at my ready.

Then I ate the produce from my garden. That’s it. Hooked. Must have. Sold.

Fresh garden produce has so much more flavor than store bought. The potatoes have a creamy texture and flavor. The tomatoes could be candy. The cantaloupe has juice dripping off of your hand when you cut into it. Unbelievably good.

Over the years at our Little House On The Prairie, I got better at gardening. The garden got bigger and I tried to grow more things. I learned a great trick on weeding (more on that later!) and I almost never water unless there is a drought. We even attempted strawberries. My husband wasn’t sure if they would take off or not, but take off they did. We would really have more strawberries than we knew what to do with. Fresh strawberries are the cat’s meow, I’d say. There was always a “First Strawberry Of The Season” dance that would take place in my kitchen. That is when I would test my mom skills and try to slice one small strawberry in as many ways as there were children standing there.

I had the perfect piece of property for gardening. Then we moved. Then my creativity skills had to come into play.

When we moved from the country, one of the requests I made was to have a yard that I can have a garden in. I really enjoyed having one and I didn’t want to be without one. We moved from a one acre yard to ¾ acre yard. No problem finding room, right? Well, yes. There are so many trees on our new property; it is hard to find a non-shady spot. (Unless it is on the driveway, the pond or in an already landscaped spot.)

I was a little discouraged. I’m not a high maintenance type of person; it doesn’t take much for me to be content. All I wanted was a garden! My sweet husband, who was trying to make it work for me, did not relish the idea of digging up tree roots that are pretty much all over our yard. We talked about square foot gardening. Square foot gardening uses a raised bed system so at least we wouldn’t have to dig into all the tree roots. However, it is rather costly to get started and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the garden. We have other projects we want to tackle.

Then my hubby got creative. (Seriously, I call him Macgyver. He can take a rope, toothpick and plastic spoon and make our furnace work. He’s amazing.) He took our dog kennel (from a dog we don’t have anymore) and placed it on stones. He then took plastic landscape edging a surrounded the bottom of the kennel to keep the dirt in. Then we bought some bags of dirt and filled it. It is contained, it keeps the critters out (we get deer, rabbits, etc here) and I get a garden. Brilliant.

I am treating it like a square foot garden. I am planting everything close together and trying to get more produce for the room I have. So far I have planted spinach, cucumber, green beans and carrots. I need to get a tomato plant or two in the ground. I have been gardening a while so I know what plants take what kind of room.

So what about those strawberry plants I keep talking about? Right by our front door in a flower bed. (Edible landscaping at its finest!) This flower bed only gets direct sunlight in the spring and first part of summer. It’s perfect for growing strawberries. By the time they are done producing, the bed gets shady. We have blossoms on the strawberries and we are gearing up for the first strawberry of the season dance. Better get my cutting skills handy. {By the way, have questions about growing your own strawberries? See my FAQ here!}