Having a garden has always been part of my life. My mom always had some sort of garden every summer filled with an assortment of veggies. In our first tiny apartment, we had tomatoes & peppers in a pot on the deck. In our first home I tried all kinds of things and learned a lot. Like how mint is a total thug in the garden and an even bigger pain to get rid of. In our previous home we had tons of raspberries and I had quite the zucchini crop a few years ago. So of course we must have a garden at our new home.

Last year because we had so much work to get the backyard ready for any sort of planting (abundant weeds, drainage, compost, rock) I did not get a garden planted until like July. We were able to get a few things but they didn’t really have enough time to flourish. This year we are having fun trying many different things but we needed something that I could control the soil quality in and I knew that a raised garden bed would be ideal for that. Our soil is heavy compact clay. We tilled compost in last summer but as everything is terraced and sloped we did our best in getting it tilled as deep as we could. I just don’t think things like carrots are going to grow very well when it hits that compact clay so enter a raised bed with nice fluffy garden soil.

My husband and I went over many ideas for a raised garden from building out of wood to buying kits but I was running into the issue of time for building (hubby is busy) and cost of a deep raised garden kit. Then I found the idea of using a stock tank. It fills all the needs. It’s 2 feet deep so carrots and even potatoes should do great, plus it sits at the same height of the deck. Not to mention it’s nice to not bend over or squat. This version is 2 ft wide so it fits in front of our deck without taking up too much space where we walk (see top photo). And I went with the 4 ft long option but I could easily add a 6 ft long version beside it later on it we like this.

Another pro is that stock tanks have a drain plug which is perfect for drainage but also feeding a drip line through. I don’t have immediate plans to put it on drip but I went ahead and fed a solid 1/4” tube through for when I want to. Now we just have to get planting! We have a few seeds we want to try and I want to get a few other starts from the garden center. I will give updates here and on IG through the summer to share how things are going.

Happy gardening!