As I’ve been musing on fall yard tasks and spring yard plans, I’ve come upon a problem. Dear yard-smart friends, I have a question.
I have this space that some previous resident kindly blocked out for gardening. It’s big–like fifteen feet by five feet big, I’m guessing. The problem is it’s wedged between the house and the fence, like so:
I’m having difficulty figuring out what this space should be used for. All the food-product plants I’ve looked at require lots of full sun, and I’m thinking this space gets only 2-3 hours of full sun a day, tops. But it’s here, so I want to do something with it.
I’ve thought about using it for vegetables, but I have other planter boxes that get lots of full sun that I think I’ll use for those.
I’ve thought about filling it with strawberry plants, or half-strawberries half-blackberries and taking what I get. Those plants at least come back every year, so if I get some berries out of it it might be worth it. (More worth it than re-planting a failing vegetable garden every year, anyway.) Plus, blackberries are tall and will therefore get the sun clearing the fence for more of the day than something shorter. I stuck the few strawberries that were dying under my raspberries here for now, so I could leave them and fill in, or move them somewhere else.
I could just fill this with flowers. But it seems like such a waste when I have lots of little edges and corners to put flowers in. This space is clearly fit for something useful, if I can just figure out what.
If all else would fail, I could just stick some fruit trees here. They’d get plenty of sun since they’d be taller than the fence. But again, I’d rather plant something else in this space if I have a chance of being successful at it. I have other places I can put trees that aren’t so well-landscaped for gardening.
Opinions, anyone? Am I being too careful about the full-sun thing? I just don’t want to spend time and money on plants that anyone with garden sense could see weren’t going to produce where I planted them.
Edit: I’ve also thought about melons, but wash-rinse-repeat with the vegetable garden concerns.
