Moan-day, Rainy-day, blues-day

Was a rather active weekend.  Thinking more about the garden, finally sending the check in for my seed order ($60), and pricing out options at the local hardware store.  Sometime last week I had posted on the local craigslist that I was in search of 5 gallon buckets. Today I checked my email, and there were a few responses as to where I could find free ones, both 5 and 8 gallon size!  My thought process is that they can be used for safe container gardening of highly reproductive and invasive plants like Jerusalem Artichoke. (a nutty tuber that is actually related to a sunflower, and has nothing to do with it's pokey namesake) It will also expand the garden growing space outside of the actual garden, without requiring any buildup.

As the garden now stands -excluding the containers on the deck and the potential 5 gallon buckets- I will have, at best, 190 sq feet of growing space.  This really is not a lot.  In fact, this hardly is enough for a simple cottage summer kitchen garden.  While it alleviates some of my issues about complexity and multi-season gardening, it wont meet the needs that I have set out for myself.  At best guess for our household, we need about 1,000 sq ft of garden space to provide enough vegetables for the majority of the year. We do not own the property and in combination with the HOA rules bootstrapping us, this simply is not a realistic size for me to achieve. (albeit we would no longer have a yard that needs mowing, and instead a garden that needs eating!) 

So I am breaking down my basic issue here: SPACE, and we are not talking about the final frontier. How do I create more growing space, without taking up more ground space and potentially pissing off the neighbors?  Well, let me be honest, we have GREAT neighbors.  In fact they were over for a little potluck at the house on Saturday, and we just chatted, hung out, and I told them about the bees that will be coming soon.  It was so nice to have a relaxed friendly time with those that physically live so close to us.  I also know a secret weapon in the good-neighbor-relations that my grandmother taught me - sharing your bounty and not your workload will bring you closer together.  This is not to say to not share the workload, but when your neighbor says "eat as much as you want from my garden that I worked so hard on", they think nothing of coming over and giving you a hand when you need to split a cord of wood. 

This means that my neighbors mean a lot to me when it comes to the planning of the garden. B and M's bedroom is about ten feet from it, and B and A look down on it from their home.  So a sloppy haphazard garden is out of the question.  At no point do I want them to look out their windows and see 50 buckets and a bunch of blue tarps holding things together.  I would care less if we owned the land and were up in the middle of the woods. 

My plan is to line the south side of the garden with the buckets of Jerusalem Artichokes, and to build up vertically along some of the fence posts.  While I will reserve a fence post spot for the bee house, I am looking into building simple rails between the posts to support some flowers and herbs.  Please excuse this horrible drawing of what I am talking about.