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Our Dog and Our Garden
We have a male dog named Sultan and he primarily lives outside. He enjoys relaxing under the shade of the trees, chasing the squirrels, and peeing on everything. He pees on all the bushes and fruit trees that we have. Urine is a great fertilizer, but the thought of eating fresh vegetables that were once directly peed on by our dog is more then just unpleasant. When we first started our home garden it was decided that it would be planted on the side of the house where it was a little less visible to our neighbors. We built a fence to close it off to keep our dog from peeing on everything. When first starting the garden I was inspired to plant a perennial food forest salad garden that would hopefully require minimal maintenance. The garden quickly became overgrown and impassible because I had made the mistake of not really planning where everything would be planted. The perennial plants were all planted too close and my gardening enthusiasm had led me to also plant various annuals that all quickly went to seed. Overall the garden was truly a mess and it made harvesting difficult and unpleasant.
This is not What I Want.
I want to show people that gardening can be easy and accessible, so that everyone has the opportunity to do it. I know that this is possible if a little bit more thought is given to organization, so I have decided to change up my garden space.
A Place for Our Annuals
I realized I desperately want a space to experiment growing various annuals. I am imagining an annual garden that would have two distinct groups of crops with one being for the winter and the other for the summer. The winter annuals would include common vegetables found in grocery stores like beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, zucchini, and carrots. The summer annuals would be heat tolerant species like Ethiopian kale, Egyptian spinach, lagos spinach, roselle, everglades tomatoes, and yard long green beans. I think the best place to grow our annual crops would be in the fenced in area on the side of my house that is currently planted with perennial vegetables. You can watch a tour of my perennial garden below. The fence would prevent our dog from going in and doing his business there and the location would allow for the more unsightly crops to be hidden. Other parts of our backyard can eventually be converted into garden beds planted with crops that are more acceptable for our dog to be around like sweet potatoes, yuca, malanga, and pumpkins.
A Place for Our Perennials
As for the perennial vegetables I think the best home for them would be in the front yard because our dog doesn’t have access to that space. All the plants can also be organized to look like an ornamental garden as to not upset any of our neighbors. I also think the best species for a front yard garden are crops that are not obviously edible; because there have been incidents where our neighbors have had fruit stolen from their front yard fruit trees. Tall perennial vegetables planted in our backyard along with our fruit trees is also an option since their height will prevent our dog from directly urinating on them. The front yard will include crops like katuk, edible hibiscus, cranberry hibiscus, and chaya.
A Place for Our Herbs
Lastly we have planted an herb garden in a our small front door garden space. You can also watch a tour of the herb garden in the video below. One main issue we have with harvesting fresh herbs for cooking is that we might have to make a last minute trip all the way to the garden. It is is not exactly far, but it would be much more convenient to have herbs growing right outside of our door. This would allow for easy harvesting even after sunset.
Have any of you ever had your dog’s space interfering with your garden space? Let me know down in the comments. If you like this post be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on another one!
Sounds like you're well on your way to figuring out a garden arrangement that works for you, the dog, and the neighbors. I love your heading "This is not what I want," haha - I've been at that point many times, of looking around realizing that my garden plans have not turned out the way I intended, and I need to re-formulate them, based on the latest experiences.
My favorite dog gardening story was when I was dog-sitting my friend's dog Buddy, and he dug a small hole in the lawn near my garden. A few weeks later, I noticed that a number of Magenta Spreen lambs quarters plants were sprouting in the spot he'd dug - that bit of soil disturbance was all the dormant seeds of this plant needed to germinate and colonize this little patch of ground. I surrounded the lambs-quarters area with stones in a heart shape, and called it "Buddy's Garden". That patch of edible plants would not have been there if it weren't for Buddy's action.
Do you grow Magenta Spreen lambs quarters? It's a great re-seeding annual green for spring to early summer, excellent raw or cooked, super tasty.
Have you had good results with Ethiopian Kale over summer? I had heard that it could handle Florida summers, so I tried it last year, and my plants of it got leaf diseases and crapped out in early summer, just like other brassicas. This year I've been getting good results with two brassicas from Johnny's seeds: Chinese kale 'Oros', and 'Carleton' greens - both are handling the summer pretty well so far.
Another super rare green that grows wonderfully in hot weather is Indian lettuce, Lactuca indica. It's a tropical lettuce that grows great right through the steamy heat & humidity of a Florida summer, great for salads. Another excellent candidate for your annual garden.
Yes, I have learned now how important it is to do some long term planning before investing a lot of time into making a garden. That is a funny story about Buddy and the lambs-quarters. I have never heard of that plant so I will have to give it a try eventually. The Ethiopian kale did well in the summer for me when I intercropped it. In areas where they were all planted together they had more problems with aphids. I am very interested in growing vegetables for hot weather, and I think that is because ever since I was young I had this mentality that no vegetable could grow in South Florida. When I started learning of all the different possibilities I was really amazed and excited to try growing them!