You’ve seen a whole lot of my garden these last 11 weeks, and you’ve heard a lot of my thoughts and ideas. So I thought it might be a nice change to get some outside input…in the form of Other People’s Gardens (OPG).

Since people in Germany (or perhaps just Europe in general) have some slightly different methods of gardening, I think this could be an interesting learning post…and maybe I’ll be able to turn it into a few posts as I manage to get a glimpse into more gardens around us. Many places in Germany have little garden areas which you can rent for a minimal fee every year, or sometimes even buy. We walk our dog past a lot of these every day, so I’m always watching to see what the locals are doing and trying to learn from them.

I’ve also been collecting ideas in my Pinterest Gardening Fun board so if you’re looking for some tip or tricks for your garden, go have a look. That site is so great for collecting inspiration — and if you don’t have a membership yet, let me know and I’ll send you an invite.

Here in our area of Germany, we have a huge issue with blight on the tomatoes. So everyone either heavily doses their tomatoes with chemicals (an option we’re not willing to take) or they find a way to cover their tomatoes within their gardens. A few people only grow tomatoes in a greenhouse because that prevents the rain from falling onto the leaves of the plants (which is what triggers late blight — a form of fungus) and we actually decided to grow our tomatoes under the roof of our guesthouse this year (which has worked awesome), because tomatoes will quickly take over your entire greenhouse space. But a makeshift covering like this one below is also rather common here and not all that difficult to build with a few random materials you may have laying around.

I also find the method of composting here in Germany rather interesting, although I think this may be a European thing in general. People just select a patch of ground in their garden where they will dump all their dead plant material and they just let it break down on its own over time. We’ve actually tried this ourselves (by accident really) by piling a bunch of dead stuff on top of one of our raised beds a couple years ago — as we simple didn’t have anywhere else to pile everything up. We did this one spring-summer, and the next year, the most amazing, rich dark brown soil was available for us to use in the rest of the garden, without any work at all.

I also think this use of an old IBC tank is quite creative for a compost heap, although I do have to wonder how they manage to get the good soil out of it later on since that thing must be really heavy!

Something which I love here in Germany is the creative way in which they grow fruit trees. It is so practical and space saving, yet still provides a great yield. They primarily do this with apple trees, but I’m sure you could do it with just about any tree. It’s a bit hard to discern here, but this actually a row of apple trees being grown on a trellis.

If you take a look from another angle, you can see that the trees are planted in a perfect row, maybe 6 feet from each other, and there is a trellis build around each tree with wires through the middle (about every 2 feet) which the tree is trained to grow across. The trees grow up and sideways, but not out. And you never really let the tree get much higher than the trellis which means you can always reach the fruit without pulling out the picker or a ladder!

These are just a few of the creative ways I’ve seen others gardening around here…what have you learned by watching your neighbors and others garden? 

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

1. You are free to join the Garden Life link up at any time. You can also skip a few weeks and then come back. It’s entirely up to you.
2. Please link directly to a post about your garden, a recipe, a tutorial for gardening, an inspirational idea, etc that relates to GARDENING — not your main blog URL.
3. Please only link to your own blog or photos hosted online.
4. You MUST link back to No Ordinary Homestead or a Garden Life link up post in your blog post. This way, if someone else wants to join the fun, they can. You can either link with text or using the Garden Life badge.
   Below is a code for the badge above. Just copy and paste this code into your post or save and upload the image to your blog:
   <a href=”https://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/garden-life-link-up/“><img title=”garden-life-300″ src=”https://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/garden-life-300.gif” alt=”garden link up” width=”301″ height=”301″ /></a>
5. I highly encourage you to visit other participants and leave comments. This is a great way to meet new friends and become inspired about your garden! I try to visit all the blogs participating as well 🙂

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

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