After losing two greenhouses to start last year, the hits kept coming: groundhogs, rabbits, skunks, voles, excessive summer heat, two separate ground wasp nests, poor return from the peppers, sunflower failure, fence issues, death and removal of a front yard tree, armyworms, nimblewill…

When we got our own house, we tried to build on our experience from our parents’ house — growing primarily vegetables and slowly adding easy fruits such as strawberries and blackberries. In September, we decided we were going to need to make drastic changes to our yard plans going forward.

Problems to Address

1. Our yard needs a lot of overall work (time and effort) to correct for poor past management. With our day jobs increasing in intensity, we were going to have to cut down on major projects and find a way to decrease the daily maintenance.
2. Diminishing returns from the vegetable garden and a changing household diet/grocery list.
3. Low morale. We were not enjoying time spent in our outdoor space at all.
4. We had already spent three growing seasons fixing the backyard and building raised beds. Was all of that going to go to waste?

The Pivot

Convert the vegetable garden to primarily grow fruit.

Fruit is often more expensive in stores, our household eats a lot even out of season, and the plants are often perennial or replenish themselves. Year-over-year, this should allow us to cut costs, waste, and daily maintenance during our increasingly busy summers.

Strawberries – We both have long-term experience with strawberries. They’re low maintenance once established, and they are a good ground cover companion plant under shrubs. We also had two raised beds overgrown with the plants and runners, so we wouldn’t have to buy those.

Blueberries – We started 2024 with one blueberry bush already in the ground and added three more in the spring. If we were careful about amending the dirt in four of the beds and transplanting the bushes, we could wind up with four boxes of blueberries and strawberries with no further outlay on the plants. The tricky thing about blueberry production is that each variety requires a particular number of cold hours each winter, which is completely outside of our control.

Ground cherries – These nightshades are easy to grow regardless of the weather, suffer very few pests, and have great yields. Although we didn’t grow them in 2024, we still have seeds from prior seasons.

Blackberries – Already proved in one season that they would produce well in our yard, planted directly in the ground. Already established, just need to be netted eventually. These are from the same plants I started and grew at our parents’ house.

Raspberries – 2024 was the raspberries’ first full season in this yard. They fruited both the first year and the second but hardly put up any new canes. In the fall, we transplanted half to two raised beds and left the other half in the ground.

2025 is what the sports world calls a rebuilding year, and that means adding newcomers as well. To replace the lost tree in our front yard, we added a serviceberry. After much research, our winter pre-orders included two dwarf cherry trees, a goji berry/wolfberry, a boysenberry, and a jostaberry. We even managed to get all of our plants in thornless varieties except for the goji berry.

Ground Cover

This is where the herbs and vegetables come in.

Given the rate of recalls on vegetables and the precarious future of the USDA/FDA right now, we’ve decided not to give up on vegetables entirely.

When and where appropriate, we plan to plant lettuce, spinach, cress, bush beans, snow/snap peas, daikon/white radish, and parsnips, oregano, basil, and chervil. We will continue to grow chives, thyme, rosemary, lavender, mint, and catnip. There is yarrow mixed into parts of the backyard, and we’ll encourage that as well.

As for other plants in and around the garden boxes, marigolds are a must-have. Ferns, alyssum, calendula, geraniums, red clover, violas, pansies, sunflowers, and lacy phacelia are also on our list. The only one that would be brand new to our yard is the lacy phacelia, but it should do just fine while the summer sun scorches out back.