That same year, one of our friends gave us some calabash seeds, and I planted LOTS of them.........OMG! They ended up taking the whole place over. We picked a ton of the small ones, and they made nice squash bread. These pictured went in the dumpster, along with many, many other wheelbarrows full. I'll never do that again!
My first garden was totally ground-based, and it nearly broke our backs, so I decided the next year to experiment with container gardening. Here's a picture of my lettuce bed - I scarfed a broken liquid feed liner (we do cows) and planted lettuce in it. It was perfect, and I still use it to this day. In fact, I have two of them. I think of them as giant flower pots. You should have seen this bed when all the salad greens were fully filled out and ready to cut - it was beautiful, except for the nut grass. Darned nut grass! Oh well, I could easily separate it from the salad greens.
A dear friend who owns a fertilizer company saw my liquid feed liner-planters and brought over some big, freaking HUGE tractor tires that we modified to plant taters in. We currently have two, but I'll take all he'll bring me. Taters love 'em!
I'm glad I live way out in the country, so I don't have to worry about what my neighbors think of all my backyard gardening experiments! It all looks pretty wacky right now, two liquid feeder tubs, two giant tractor tires, a couple of wooden raised beds..........but when our garden is growing in all it's Spring glory, it looks quite righteous! I need to stop blogging and get to tilling! Here's the rest of my back yard.........
which makes it all worth it!