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c/diy-backyard•terry_wood51terry_wood51•24d agoProlific Poster

My neighbor said my raised beds were way too close together and I laughed at him until harvest time

So my neighbor Bob is like 70 years old and grows tomatoes every summer, but I figured I knew better since I watched like 40 hours of YouTube on building garden beds. I built five 4x8 foot boxes in my backyard last spring and squeezed them into a tight row with maybe 18 inches between each one. Bob walked over while I was filling them with soil and said "you're gonna hate yourself come July when those plants fill out." I just nodded and kept working because what does some old guy know, right? Fast forward to August and I could barely squeeze between the beds to pull weeds or pick peppers without smashing my plants. The zucchini leaves were rubbing against the tomato cages and I had powdery mildew on everything from no air flow. I spent this winter tearing up three of the beds and spacing them 3 feet apart, and Bob helped me level them out. Cost me about $80 in extra lumber but now I can actually walk through my garden without doing the sideways shuffle.
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ben206
ben20624d ago
Learned the hard way that YouTube doesn't teach you how to get a wheelbarrow through a zucchini jungle.
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wrenh65
wrenh6524d ago
Oh man, I feel this. Last year I tried to take a shortcut through my own zucchini patch and ended up stuck for 20 minutes with the wheelbarrow handle poking me in the back. At least the zucchini won.
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wrenh65
wrenh6524d ago
@ben206 you're absolutely right about that, youtube tutorials skip the important stuff like how to untangle yourself from a three foot tall zucchini vine while your neighbor watches from their porch sipping coffee. i spent a good fifteen minutes just staring at my stuck wheelbarrow thinking about all the life choices that led me there. the worst part is the zucchini just laughed at me while i tried to rock the wheelbarrow back and forth like i was in some kind of produce-themed escape room. at least we're all in this together, learning the hard way that gardening has a sense of humor.
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