For our July blog post, second year Backyard Gardener Michelle volunteered to share an update on how her season is going. Since last year Michelle has had big dreams of renovating a portion of her sloped backyard into a usable garden space. As Michelle recounts, there have been a number of challenges and setbacks along the way. Despite the obstacles, each year she’s been able to plant a little more, and I’m confident she’ll keep building on what she’s started. She is a great example of a common theme we see in gardening, which is that things seldom go as planned, but there is so much to be learned along the way. The best thing you can do is keep going. 

When I attended one of the first workshops this year and they asked if people would be interested in writing a blog I thought this would be fun, never wrote a blog. Well…this blog is definitely not what I thought I would be writing about. If some things could go wrong, well it all went wrong. My backyard has been a work in progress since 2019. A lot had happened in that time. Good, bad, and I am not even sure how that happened lol. I wanted to create a backyard that had a little bit of everything I wanted. Key word I. My backyard is not what everyone would want, but it is what I want and enjoy. I have taken a small, flat piece and a big hill and turned it slowly into my paradise. This year I finally was gettin into the state of planting my garden areas. First I had to get the ground ready. That is where the problems started. Between an old cable line not marked (yes, I called before I dug) and rocks, rocks, and yes, you guessed it, rocks. So now I am behind because this process is long and actually am still at this stage. But I powered through with the help of my husband and at least got some tomatoes and peppers in the ground. So I thought well at least I will just work this area now and then start the other areas later. Good plan. Well at least I thought. Now more problems because since the cable line was there, I had to dig back into the hillside and before we could build the little retaining wall, the dirt slid and took out some plants. Always trying to stay positive but it just seemed one thing after another would go wrong. My plants struggled and the soil needs a lot of TLC. The only thing at this time positive is the deer had a nice little feast but I am pushing forward and researching my next steps so I will have a successful garden. Thank you to the Backyard Gardeners for the blog opportunity. Hopefully, fingers crossed, my next one will be of my success in the garden.