My two-storey, two-car garage is basically my potting shed, lol!

I've been here 20 years and we've never parked our cars in it. You have to get out to unlock the doors with a key, and then manually open them, get back in the car and drive it in, manually close and lock the doors, etc... so we started just leaving the cars parked in front of it, and got into that habit. Eventually the garage became filled with so much stuff that there was no room for cars!

I have three long tables in there, which hold pots of all sizes, spray bottles, all manner of plant supports, bulb cages, bags and boxes of amendments, and where I place garden ornaments/clay or ceramic pots/trellises, etc., that need to come in for the winter. I also did try storing my overwintered dahlia tubers here, but found they did better being stored in the basement.

I have two refrigerators in there as well, which I used for coolers for my cut flowers when I was selling bouquets at the market (not to mention the occasional Thanksgiving leftovers, lol).

Right near one of the doors is a corner with all my tools - rakes, spades, edgers, hoes, etc., along with buckets of my smaller tools. I've also stored my winter-sowing supplies here (potting mix bales, strings of mik jugs, etc.)

Most importantly, the garage was where I dragged my 200+ pots in my pot ghetto for the winter. I'm way down now - maybe 25 pots or so - and I've found that for the most part they survive just as well outside, so I now only drag the more tender ones inside. That's a good thing, as, after I industriously cleaned out one half of the garage to really get myself organized, my husband bought a small boat and promptly seized the newly-cleaned-out space for himself. I was not a happy camper! But I still store stuff around the boat - every weekend he takes it out he has to move my leaf shredder, the lawn mower, etc., so I've staked my claim as well. The worst thing is that all the tomato cages and bean towers are stored behind his boat, so every spring I have to catch him on a day he goes out fishing to get my veggie garden up and running, lol.

Oh, and here is where I store my bags of shredded leaves after I shred them and while waiting for the ground to freeze to put them down as mulch. So while it sounds excessive to say that my two-car garage is my potting shed, the space really does get pretty fully used!

Dee

The garage is where I keep dormant potted fig trees over the winter. It gets down close to or occasionally just below freezing so plants are undamaged.

Also a good spot for canna tubers buried in peat moss.

My garage and basement are taken up by my better half's hobby of model railroading. I will store some bulbs under the layout, but that's about the amount of real estate I have. However, we are talking about building an addition to the garage.....oh yeah, that is for trains too! The entire basement and garage isn't enough! Then again, he always says, "but you have the WHOLE outside!" I guess he's got me there!

Dee, your garage sounds like a gardener's dream!

PM2, do you feel like you're lacking something with your current spaces you have? Or looking to add more options in general for easier access, storage, etc.?

Hi Dee - Wow, do you get a lot of use out of your garage..lol! I think a lot of people don’t use their garage for cars for the same reasons.

Gardening does seem to produce a lot of ‘stuff’ to store. That was a lot of pots you used to keep up with. I started out with 25 for outdoor use and within 3 years had decided I needed to cut way down. Now I have about 5 pots outdoors in the summer and that’s enough to keep up with.

I wondered if anyone used a refrigerator. I put all my collected seeds in our refrigerator and haven’t gotten to the point where we need a spare. In the spring I had a rose order arrive too early and had to store those in the refrigerator. [g]

WinterSowing supplies are in our basement at the moment. I do like using a string to keep the bottles out of the way and it's kind of like 'tacky' art. lol

We also keep bags of leaves in the garage until I need them to mix with the grass clippings or mulch the beds with them. My DH is never pleased when we are stuffing all the bags in there. [g] I use the lawn mower to chop them up, so I don’t have to have another piece of equipment.

We have a lot of tomato cages and tall stakes, bamboo stakes that go up on the overhead in the garage at the moment.

It’s a lot of stuff!

RustyBlackhaw - I’d love to try a fig tree. I want to make fig jam. :-) That might be something to consider trying, thanks. Do you get a few figs to eat?

Thyme2dig - Maybe all you need is a shed of your own? :-) That I would think could be part of the agreement of getting an addition on the garage for the trains. [g]

Well….we’re going to have a larger space to use and I’m just thinking through how much to allocate for garden use. I actually have gotten into the habit of working in place in the garden, even when I’m potting. So, I’m not sure I would get in the habit of using a bench. I would like to try overwintering dahlia tubers in the garage, because my basement is too warm. I’m also thinking at some point, I’d like to pot up spring bulbs and leave them somewhere until the spring. I suppose that’s better to leave outside to get the moisture. And I’m wondering if I ought to try to make space for a small dorm size refrigerator just to keep my seeds in. Just mulling it all over.

We have a two car garage with a bump out behind our entry and a small one car width addition on the back. Until my DH retired we had two cars which were always parked in the garage, day and night. The last two years we went to one car and that space soon became a space to keep plants early spring or late fall. Also to store garden and lawn equipment. The other two extra spaces are also garden and bird supply areas, poles, pots, cages, fencing, tools, etc. There is a large workbench in the back addition that I used to use to do some wood craft and building trellis etc. Now it is also storage for extra empty pots and winter sowing equipment overwintering potted perennials.

Behind the bump out there is a concrete patio enclosed on three sides by the house, bump out and addition. This is where I do most of my potting when the weather is tolerable and where I grow potted brugmansia and other smaller potted plants that haven't yet been put in holding beds or found a place in the gardens. We rescued a large wooden redwood or cedar picnic table a neighbor put on the curb with a for free sale to use as my potting table and to hold small pots of annuals and perennials on the patio. That large table is what has taken up much of the room of the second car over the winter. Winter sown jugs and 2Ls cover the patio from winter until late spring when the brugs come out.

All tubers, corms, bulbs and seeds are stored in the basement as would freeze in our garage.

Interesting to hear that some store shredded bags of leaves in their garage. Seems all my bags get small holes in the bottom and the leaves decompose and stain the floor so no longer leave any bags in the garage for more than a week. They get stored next to the compost pile in the back yard behind a large white pine.

MNWSgal - It’s nice to have that extra space so the cars can fit in the garage. [g] We keep more in the basement than the garage right now, because our garage is not attached and it does get pretty cold. All the bird food is in the basement in an aluminum can with a cover. And all the lawn furniture goes down there too, along with ceramic pots.

We need to allow for room for a workbench for woodworking activities and repairs in the garage, too. As for empty pots, while I love the ceramics, I’m leaning toward purchasing more outdoor pots that stay out all year round and save all that trouble of moving them in and out and the space to store them. VERY expensive though!

Any potted plants I have left over at the end of the season are buried into the vegetable beds.

In the garage with bagged leaves, I haven’t paid much attention to staining the floor. But we haven’t had any bags come apart at the bottom either. We also fill up any empty plastic rubbish barrels with leaves so that works better too. We usually have a good supply of flat cardboard for under the mulch that we use in the garden and that might help if you put that under your bags.

I wonder how gardeners manage without a garage.

Yes all the time. All of my gardening tools are in there including 5 gal buckets (a must), and garden carts/wheelbarrows, some pots etc. I also overwinter my ex- large pots in there that are too heavy to carry up to the sunroom.

I do have a small garden shed that I use for storage only (pots and lawn furniture). Also a larger shed that is used to store the lawn mowers and misc winter storage. They are way up the hill in the back yard....not convenient at all.

The garage works better for me as the water controls are there....and the boom box :) Best place to start.

I only park in there during the winter, only in the summer if there is a bad storm coming. I have a messy silver maple that hovers over the driveway, and it loves to drop branches. I'd be very upset if that thirsty messy !$&?! tree damaged my car. Of course I have to do a quick 52 pick up before I can pull in the car lol.

I don't know what I'd do without my garage!

GardenHo - That reminds me, we use a ton of 5 gallon buckets. They come in handy for so many things. And we have a half a dozen or so large milk crates that get used all the time. Rolling cart /Wheel barrel too.

You mention a boom box. I wish I had a boom box. I don’t know what we did with ours. When the walkman’s came in and then the iPods, the boom boxes became history, but they were great for the yard.

Our property is surrounded by Silver Maples…luckily not over our driveway, you have my sympathy.

Half the garage is for the car (mainly in the winter) and the other half is used mainly for storing the driveway pots for the winter. They are mostly relatively inexpensive plastic storage pots that we drill holes in the bottom to make them suitable for growing peas, beans, tomatoes, garlic and other veggies. They hold lots of soil so don't dry out as fast as smaller pots. The garlic gets planted in the fall and starts growing in the garage in late winter. Mums and a few other perennials winter in the garage as well. Some tools are kept there too, especially ones used often in the front garden - e.g. the long-arm pruners used to prune the wisteria 'trees'.

We don't store chopped leaves at all - all the leaves (and there are LOTS of them from the big old a shin the backyard!) get dumped directly into the backyard garden beds in the fall. Sometimes they are chopped with the lawnmower but mostly they are raked in whole as the ash leaves are not too big.

Last year DH had a shop built. it is well insulated and he intends to keep it heated. He divided it so I have a space for my garden stuff. I really only wanted a dry place to store my tools, pots, etc, but since it is going to be heated, I'm contemplating what I could keep growing in there. It probably will be quite cool though, so I'm not sure what I should attempt to winter in there. I need suggestions. It has windows, btw.

I never realized how useful the garage was for things other than cars! Ours gets two cars for the winter, only one for the summer, too many projects and drying bulbs and all the garden tools I just exhaustedly drop when I drag myself in at night lol

I'm lucky enough to have enough heat that things don't freeze in there unless it gets really cold. I have lights setup in the back for seed starting and lug in plenty of plants which just sit there dry all winter until they get to go out again. For the deck pots (plastic and terra cotta) I have a covered part where they can sit out of the rain and snow of winter, so I'm glad I don't have to carry them around to the garage.

I really like having a small table to pot things up and sow seeds. I used to be able to do this indoors but the wife changed that pretty quick.

I have a two car garage that is connected to the house. Neither my husband's car or my car can fit in it!

One side has the lawnmower, wheelbarrow, garbage and recycling cans, shovels and other large garden tools and various bags of manure and compost. The other side has my son's car which is not driveable, small garden tools, lots of empty pots, shelving with various garden products and sprayers and junk my kids have left behind.

This fall I'm hoping to organize the entire mess.

"...
This fall I'm hoping to organize the entire mess..."

Ah, I've been saying that for years, lol - along with "this SPRING I'm hoping to organize..." :) I'm not too concerned with that any more. After all, the one time I DID get things organized (at least for half of the garage) my husband moved his boat in. All that work and he waltzed right in and I was back where I started. He stays away from the messy side. Me, I pretty much know where everything is in that mess. Kind of like the mess on my desk - stuff may be in piles, but I know where everything is in each of those piles, lol!

I organize every fall. In the winter the garage which gets little active use other than driving the car in and stowing snow shovels and birdseed and stays very orderly until spring. From spring through fall it becomes a jumble of pots, bags of mix, bags of weeds, pails, fencing, folding lawn chairs, etc. Tools get put away each day though. Occasionally I sweep it out and straighten up a bit but the well used look remains until that fall cleanup.

diggerdee, I hear you!

I'd like to at least get rid of the all the stuff my kids have left behind. (I'd really love to get rid of the car my oldest left behind, but that's not happening so fast.)