Gardening is like knitting or crocheting. Sometimes it involves tearing out your mistakes and starting over.
When I first moved to the Carolina Midlands (USDA Zone 8a) from Long Island, NY (USDA Zone 5) there was a learning curve. At first that involved experimenting what would grow here, and the fact that there were Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter weed cycles to contend with. But last year we made major changes to our hardscape.
A hardscape is, “the man-made features used in landscape architecture, e.g. paths or walls, as contrasted with vegetation.” My original kitchen garden installation was a series of Square Foot Garden boxes. I made the mistake of building them out of pine, and the insects and fungi of my new subtropical environment ate this wood for lunch. (They were also too shallow, and even with amendments the soil was “eh.”) Now we have creosote-treated 10″ x 10″ raised beds, full of great, deep soil. They’re lined in tar paper to keep the creosote out of our food. This will be my first year planting all of them.
I ordered some very sturdy trellises to handle things like pole beans and cucumber vines. They’re made of cedar, and that ought to foil the hungry bugs that ate my original pine planting boxes. Can’t wait until they get here. After the forecast freeze due Thursday night, I can start planting in earnest.