Oh the Dirty Details of a Garden…

One of my husbands main concerns with building a box garden was how he was possibly going to mow around the thing!! He thought it would just be one of those pain-in-the-rear things that he’d constantly have to be weed-whipping. 

Our original plans for the side of the garden toward the fence was to put down some weed prevention tarp stuff (I know – I’m super technical with names here) and then to lay rubber mulch. 

The idea would be then for us to place a more permanent fence – with a GATE even!! – around the edges of the garden, so I don’t have to hop over other fencing each time I want to get in.

So While we were at Home Depot, we were looking through the mulch and rubber mulch – we came across this rubber mulch mowing strip.

Genius!  It’s meant to be placed around the edges of a garden or really around anything, so you can safely put your lawn mower across the strip, without any mulch flying at your feet – and therefore preventing the need to weed whip that area.

My largest concern of Rodents (Yes, real animals and the toddler style of rodents) was quickly solved with some fencing added to the three sides of the box, and then we used a little bit stronger fencing around the open sides.

But my next concern was a little stronger.

My husband still hadn’t put in the watering system that initially got him super excited about this entire project!

We had all the parts – it just took him time to dig a trench to put the hose into – and then install all the pieces.

Well – When we installed the sprinkler system:  We got…. crap.

I mean – the sprinklers SAID that they spray 6-8 feet.  We got 8 sprinklers for this 12×3 box.  Should be plenty.  Except – they sprayed about 2 inches.

So.  We’re returning all those suckers as soon as I can dig up my receipts.  They weren’t cheap.

So we had to move to plan B.  More on this later!