Sometimes you just have to get creative with your gardening efforts!  For the past several years, I’ve tried to grow a mix of lettuce and spinach with little success.  Not because they’re not easy to grow, but because the resident chipmunk thinks it’s his personal salad bowl.  It’s amazing how much disappears overnight.

Last year, I was somewhat successful with container plantings, but it just wasn’t enough and I found it difficult to do succession planting this way.  I scoured the internet for creative ideas that would meet the needs within my property.  Lettuce prefers cooler weather or at least shade, it had to be out of reach of Mr. Chipmunk, and I didn’t want lettuce containers all over my yard.

I found an idea on Pinterest that I liked but it didn’t fit into the space that met my needs; stair risers were used to create “shelves” of window boxes.  I thought this was perfect.  It held several window boxes that looked attractive and it would be easy enough to do succession planting this way, however I decided to move the lettuce out of our garden space onto a small deck off the back of the house.  It was shaded by an overhang most of the day, easy enough to water, and close enough for me to just pop out of my kitchen to grab some fresh greens for dinner.

So I tweaked the idea and instead of using stair risers, I had my husband attach “L” brackets to the narrow wall of the porch to create our “floating window box” look.  Show me some creative ideas you’ve used in your garden.