Thought I would share ...

My DH and I live in central Arkansas. Since the weather was so good in January, we ended up staying home almost the whole month. As a result, we got a goodly amount of work done around the outside of the house in preperation for my SFG Garden.

Here are 3 pics. Before, During and After.

Before we started clearing ....



During the clearing ...



After the clearing ...



All the cedar trees we cut down will not go to waste! They will be slabbed out and used as the garden beds!

I love the pictures !! Very very pretty place as well. How exciting, you get to use your own trees for your beds!! I love that.
Ha-v-v

WOW. A LOT of work. Great job.

wncsohn, what a lot of work, but it looks like you have a great place to locate your SFG. It seems to be plently close to the house, so that will make your gardening easier.

Nice that you are able to slab those trunks and create your beds from materials that you have on hand.

Will you be able to run a hose to the garden area, or can you get water out there easily? Once your beds are built and filled, water will be your main concern.

Great going, and please keep us posted.

Thanks everyone! Although I will admit that it was 96% the doing of my DS's and my DH! I did help clean up branches and whatnot when they got cut off, but that's about it. All the really hard work was done by the men-folk!

The edge of that building you see is actually the shed that's going to become my "Outdoor Kitchen". It's going to be moved around the back-side of the house, closer to the actual kitchen, once the area back there has been cleared and prepared.

If you were able to do a 180 degree turn, you'd see the house right behind you. That particular area is only about .. hmmm ... 50-70 feet from the house. And as a matter of fact, the hydrant for the hose is located on that end of the house as well, so water will not be an issue!

I'm totally into not wasting things, and the idea hit me a week or so ago, why spend money on cinderblocks or pine, when we have all this great wood (Cedar no less!) just laying around now!?

One of the main issues we are going to run into, and I don't think you can really see it well in those pics since they're actually pretty close up to where the work was being done, but the terrain is quite uneven. I'm wanting to do some slight terracing so we can have varying levels in the garden. From the front of the house to the top of that piece of land is about a 3-5 foot difference in height (the house being lower). I thought if we could do small 1' high terraces every 50 feet or so it would look absolutely adorable.

It's all on my Honey-Do List, doncha know. I can come up with all sorts of creative ideas, but not capable (in any decent time frame anyway) of doing it myself! LOL

When all said and done, you're gonna have a great looking garden area

It sounds like you have very good plans in motion. Welcome to SFG.

Carol ....get stuck in doing the terracing like my wife did , she drove the 14 foot blade International buldozer & an 11 ton tracked 1 cubic yard bucket excavator , trashed everything insight that required trashing & sorted things out whilst I was logging up with the chain saw .

plantoid wrote:Carol ....get stuck in doing the terracing like my wife did , she drove the 14 foot blade International buldozer & an 11 ton tracked 1 cubic yard bucket excavator , trashed everything insight that required trashing & sorted things out whilst I was logging up with the chain saw .

LOL My DH would love it if we had something like that to play with. Unfortunately we don't. Which is why I was planning on doing it in 20' x 20' sections. It'll take alot of time, but the way I look at it, when it's finally done it will be a wonderful fealing!

This garden has been in the "planning stages" for a couple of years now. Now that we've finally DONE something I'm feeling SO much more excited about it!