My deck garden replaced my weed and bug infested garden

[Zone6]

How do you like my deer protector from 2008? I think it was a comice pear. I used garden support sticks and plastic fencing. Deer would push it over. This was in my GardenWeb days.

Anyway, my pretty garden ended up as a mass of weeds and bugs. It was not raised beds. It was just the ground with the grass removed outlined in treated wood. (I hope I didn’t poison myself.) All that rock is still in the ground. It is just covered in grass and weeds.

This was the garden in 2007. I read you kill the grass with black plastic then you can plant your garden over it after you till it. That was what I did. Well, live and learn. The only problem is when you are old, not much time left to learn from your mistakes.

This was maybe 2008. The garden grew OK for a year or two, then it was all downhill from there on out.

This is my garden now…on the deck.

I got basil left, microgreens center and peppermint right.

I gave up gardening about 5 years ago. I’m 99.9% fruit trees now. But if I had the space, I’d like to try gardening again, just in a greenhouse with fake, clean dirt. (potting soil)

I still can’t figure out how much seeds to use. I scatter what I think is good seed coverage and get too much. The mint came back from last year. It survived -8F. It is a survivor! Well, you know the deal. You either got a green thumb or not. I’m not much of a gardener. But I can grow certain fruit trees. Just not the finicky ones. The fruit trees I have success with are the ones where you plant it in the ground and it does its thing.

I’m not a slave to the garden any longer. It is all trees now…and the old garden rocks! Weeds and grass sure can reclaim things, huh.

[northwoodswis4]

It always cracks me up that people send a lot of money on a deck, then fill it with potted plants. If you must have things in pots, why not just set them on a tarp on the ground below the deck, and then sit on the deck and look out at them?

[Eme]

Wow your in ground garden was beautifully laid out! So sorry it didn’t work out.

@northwoodswis4 I agree, however, most people don’t build, so they’re making do with the space they have. The deck has the benefit of often being safer from rabbits and sometimes deer. And, it’s just nicer to have a deck softened up by plants. I did build, but I wasn’t thinking gardens at the time and built a relatively large deck (in line with my neighborhood builds) for the lot. We don’t entertain virtually ever, I’m not someone who sits much (at all), deck furniture is expensive, mosquitos are rampant in summer, and I’m very limited on planting space. So, the deck has become a garden. It’s packed, but I love it. I’ll edit add a picture.

Now, if I had an acre and woods around me, the deck would be way lighter on plants because the citrus/etc would be in ground in a greenhouse (though still have some to soften it up), and I would want to sit and look and contemplate nature/life as opposed to the 15+ houses I can see from my backyard. (Vomit)