Within me lives someone who has a desire to create and make things. However, my ADHD gets in the way of that sometimes. My ability to be patient and learn is slim to none. If I know how to do something, like I do with software engineering, its not because it came natural to me. Its because I had to work through the meltdowns and frustration until it all clicked. So while I have always had an interest in gardens, I had to wait until I could have a setup that would work for me, and accept that I might have to try a few times.
My husband helped me set up a portion of our yard away from our dogs so that I can grow whatever I please. He’s such a good guy. I even have a small tumbler for compost. Learning to compost is its whole thing on its own.
I chose to do a raised bed so I could control the soil and easily weed out what I don’t want in there. I got a deep bed and its working out great. It allows me to grow root vegetables if I choose too. Which I did, I’m going to have a nice batch of carrots. If you have a bad back or bad knees, this is much better than having to be on the ground. You can easily pull up a chair and do what you need to do.
The set up took a bit of work of course. I think getting going in any setup will. That may be the one downfall of using a deep raised bed, it takes a lot of soil. I think we got about 20+ bags of raised bed soil mix and it got it deep enough for me to do what I needed to do. Lots of heavy lifting.
I placed my raised bed near my irrigation system so I didn’t have to think beyond my water programming. I fail at remembering to water my plants. That’s usually what ends up killing them. Raised beds are also really good at drainage because of the type of mix used.
Choosing what to grow. I had no idea really, I knew I wanted tomatoes and lots of them, but I just went to home depot and looked at their seeds and their seasons and went from there.
I tried a bunch of different things, including herbs, but I went on vacation and my auto-watering failed and killed a lot of it. However, my spinach survived, I resewed the carrots, and my tomatoes lived as well. To see these plants thriving excites me. I never thought I could do it. Its almost a little too exciting. I want to show everyone my garden, lol. “Welcome to my home and here’s my carrots.”
It gets me in my backyard, my dogs love watching me, and hopefully at some point I can make a good meal with what I planted. To have something come to fruition really feels nice. And to have the patience to enjoy it is even better.
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