Let me say upfront that I don’t consider myself as someone who has a “green thumb”. This post is for the novice who may be considering a vegetable garden as a first time project. I would love to hear ideas from folks on how to maintain a garden or better options for planting, so let me know!
My four year old daughter, Payton, loves to play in the dirt. Last year, we planted a very unsuccessful garden for her simply within the confines of a plastic princess pool. The sunflowers bloomed and the pumpkin seeds became vines that never produced a pumpkin.
This year, we tried to take a more strategic approach for a couple of reasons. One, we would actually like to see something grow and two, we are going to be placing our home on the market soon and needed something that looked a little better than the princess pool.
One of the things I have noticed from buyers over the past several months is that most of them desire gardening space. Some buyers are simply looking for a backyard with direct light where a few container pots can be placed. Others are a bit more complex and look for larger areas to either dig a garden or place a large vegetable box. Either way, there seems to be a move toward being able to buy a home with a backyard that offers more than the typical patio, play set and azaleas.
In our case, we kept it simple because I didn’t want to intrude on our backyard play area. We built a wooden box measured at 4’ x 6’ and placed it in an area that gets lots of natural sunlight. Thankfully my dad was able to help us and brought in topsoil (we used half a yard). We mixed our topsoil with mushroom compost as well as Black Kow—now that was interesting. We tried to explain the Black Kow bag to Payton and I thought she might never go near the garden again! Payton had picked out what she wanted in the garden: corn, pumpkin, watermelon, carrot, cucumber. I added in one strawberry plant and we were finished in less than 3 hours on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
We made sure the vegetable box project wouldn’t interfere with the selling features of our backyard. I recommend a few steps to make sure that your gardens don’t distract buyers:
• Don’t place your box in a central area of your backyard. Put it to the side or tucked away in a corner.
• Once your veggies being to grow, maintain the look of the garden. Don’t allow it to become overgrown or take away more space than it should.
• Once you cut some veggies, place them in a bowl on your countertop so buyers will see that the backyard garden is a success! Of course, eat them too.
While outside we also replenished the pine straw in our front yard and immediately took photos of the exterior. If you are thinking of selling your home in the near future, consider taking a few photos of the landscape after a day of yard work. Your agent will thank you for those colorful photos!
Good luck with your gardens and let us know what your best practices are for fruitful and plentiful harvest!
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