[Ben E Lou]

ASSETS

Here's what I have going in my favor.


YARD SIZE AND LAYOUT--We have a large, open back yard, enclosed (for now..more on that later) by a 6-foot fence. Our land is 100 feet across, and it's roughly 120 feet from the back fence to the back deck, from which this pic was taken:

Dropbox - yardpic.png

(Note: I use Dropbox for pic sharing. If pics don't show up inline in this thread, I'll provide a link right below the pics where you can just click to view.)


As you may also be able to tell from the pic, the yard slopes toward the back fairly significantly, a fact that I leveraged somewhat with a quickly-thrown-together rain barrel irrigation system, and will use much more extensively next year.

This year, the main portion of the garden extended 13 feet out from the fence, and went 17 feet along the fenceline you see above. Further down the fence, toward the corner, I had a 13x12ish bed of wild flowers, seeds thrown there to bring pollinators to the area. Next year I plan to do the wildflowers again roughly the same size, but make the main garden 13x31--nearly double the size of last year's. (I don't really want to bring it more than 13 feet out from the fence, so that there's a uniform line to the storage shed there.)

ABUNDANT SUNSHINE--As you view the pic above, the sun rises to the left, moves across the sky slightly toward the back of the yard, and sets to the right. Even the area a few inches on our side of the fence is in direct sunlight from roughly 7:30am-2:00pm for the entire spring and summer, and the plants farthest from it get direct sun until around 4:30 or 5.



EXCELLENT AREA FOR A COMPOST PILE--I can't dig or till in the little nook created by the storage shed and the corner of the fence, because electrical and cable TV lines run through that area. However, the hidden nature of it makes it a great location for composting. No worries about smell or eyesore back there. Behind it is a small treeline and then the golf course that you can glimpse through some breaks in the trees in the pic.

PLENTY OF GRASS CLIPPINGS TO COMPOST--Yeah..big yard ftw.

SUPPORTIVE/HELPFUL NEIGHBORS--On many fronts, the neighbors just on the other side of the fence from the garden are awesome, and they're pretty much all-in when it comes to helping with the composting effort in particular. The upcoming "liabilities" post would mention the fact that our yard has fewer trees, and thus fewer dead leaves, than any one of them around, and we need "brown" matter to offset all the "green" grass and kitchen scraps. (More on composting details later.) Besides the fact that they're a family of six and they save their kitchen scraps for my compost pile, in the past few weeks they've been texting me before they're about to rake leaves so I can dump the bags in my yard and then they re-use them.

Also, they own that fence between our yards. (It was already there. We built the other three sides in our yard when we moved in.) It's on its last legs, and they actually asked us if we are ok with them changing it to a different type. (Non-privacy.) Of course we said that it's 100% their decision, but they insisted that because it affects us, they want to know what we think. The honest answer is that we don't really need "privacy" in the back yard, and both of our back decks are so high that we can easily see one another over the fence as it is anyway. Not to mention that the type that they're likely going to do would allow the sun through, thus giving my entire garden 10+ hours.


LARGE RAIN BARREL--A month or two ago, I picked up a 275-gallon IBC tote, cut the top cap in the shape of a downspout adapter, elevated it 2 feet off the ground with cinder blocks, purchased a cam lock-->garden hose adapter for it, and will run drip irrigation from it next year.





https://www.dropbox.com/s/bw9ambfnmbg4tqx/rainbarrel.png?dl=0


THE NORTH CAROLINA EXTENSION SERVICE--They're quite the resource for home gardeners--tons of free material, including frequent highly informative classes taught by master gardeners. I've taken a couple of in-person ones and found them hugely helpful: https://guilford.ces.ncsu.edu/