Bird's Eye View of Your Garden

This is from Google Earth. I wanted to show that it is possible to have a SFG in a tiny back yard.  The lot is 60' across and 100' deep.  As you can see, the front yard and driveway (top / north) and the house (middle) takes up most of the lot.  The gazebo is in the lower left with the orange tree wrapped around it.  The compost pile in under the smaller crepe myrtle next to it.  On the right is the attached white patio cover.  The trees on the south side of the neighbor fence totally block winter sun to 2 of my beds.  One can be clearly seen as a white "L" shape.  The 2' x 8' table top bed which is part of the key-hole set up can be seen just south of the patio cover.  The rest is red brick and now has 3 beds, 2 sweet potato totes and several 5-gallon potato and tomato buckets.  Looking down the left side of the house are the winter squash beds.  Down the right side of the house (public walkway side) are 2 trellised beds and the BTE strip.  The BTE strip looks green in this 2014 shot before we removed all of the star jasmines that grew up and over the fence.  This strip is my neighborhood  show and tell area with plants peeking over the top of the fence.  The SFG and isles now officially take up 1/2 of the back yard!!


TD, if you want to draw/write on the photo with some program, please feel free.

TD or I can move your existing write-up and photo here if you want.

Here is what mine looks like. North is at the top so the top edge of the yard is pointing North-West. Total lot area is 75 feet wide and 100 feet deep. The two story house is relatively small and therefore has a small foot print. As can be seen there is shade in the backyard (from the house) and especially in the winter time the whole area is mostly in shade. In the afternoon the backyard is sunny until the sun gets further west later in the day and then the big tree comes into play for to provide some shade. There is room for SFG expansion. I would like to do something with the frontyard which is in full sun and has way too much lawn. The item labelled "TT" along the left side of the house is the Table Top SFG which is not far from the back/side door.

Here is what I posted in my 2017 SFG Adventures in Hampstead, NC thread.

Ok, so I am copying what Jaffa55 did in his intro thread...I am posting some satellite images of my little plot of land. I don't know why but I just thought that was genius. It gives a bit of a different perspective of what I am working with.

Here is a view of my block in the neighborhood.

Here I zoomed in on just my lot. The "X"s are for the trees I cut down this winter. You can barely see my 4x4 TT in the image which has to be a couple of years old. (Note the compass in the upper Right Corner pointing North)

Thanks for the idea Jaffa!

Thanks Ralitaco... but it might be more laziness than genius, lol! (BTW, I'm a "she").  Who knew I'd be a trend setter?

For completeness of this thread, here's my "blank slate":



I think it's very cool that your boxes are showing up in Google earth!

Jaffa, Thank you for also posting your view in this thread. I like to keep "like" topics together.

Jaffa55 wrote:(BTW, I'm a "she").  

Duly noted, but I'm sure I will get it wrong again so I apologize in advance.

Jaffa55 wrote:I think it's very cool that your boxes are showing up in Google earth!

Yes it is cool in some ways, but scary in others.

I thought I would try posting this here, now that I have just learned how to.  As you can see my situation is very different from most people here. I have 1.8 acres. , about 1 acre is in trees though. So from the front of this picture down the left along fence are raspberries/blackberries and then a little in from them the big bushy grapes, then going back are the SFGs and I have about 1100 sq ft of them. Down the right side are raspberries, and behind house is my BTE garden.  Many of the SFG do not show as they are obscured by fruit trees that I have about 10 of.  Sorry for duplicate posting.

What a wonderful place you have!! SFG, fruit trees, berries and BTE.

sanderson wrote:What a wonderful place you have!!  SFG, fruit trees, berries and BTE.

I bet it looks very different in the winter though.

This is a piece of my place.  I know from the shadows, lol, it was about 8:30 a.m. You can see boxes near the fence line in the back yard area.  Placement is not closer to the house because of a bit of sloping that I didn't want to deal with.

so where are the Llamas LM?

They are either out the back on pasture beyond the photos perimeter, or if it was a hot day,  they are very happy just laying down in front of their individual fans.  Or sometimes they are lazy asses that haven't gotten up yet that morning! 

How are you guys doing this?  I cannot get a picture of my house aerially.

I have to say I have cheated in a way.  ... last summer we briefly decided to sell our house, and since it was an acreage, the realtor brought a fellow who was a drone photographer  ....... I had gone to google earth to see our lot, but it was a terrible shot, late in the day, hard to see anything.. so I used the drone shot... So that is my story  

The steps for a screen shot varies a little by computer. My laptop -- first hold down the FN botton, continue holding and press screen shot button.  
Right click copy. 
Paste it to my own email address. 
Save to my pictures. 
Put it on the forum like any other picture.  

If this doesn't work, Google screen shot and it lists other methods.

Scorpio Rising wrote:How are you guys doing this?  I cannot get a picture of my house aerially.

Me either. Everytime I try to zoom in close enough to see my SFG it turns sideways and I get a shot of the front of the yard and house, showing my mother and her friends sitting on the front porch.

CapeCoddess wrote:Everytime I try to zoom in close enough to see my SFG it turns sideways and I get a shot of the front of the yard and house, showing my mother and her friends sitting on the front porch.

When you zoom in too much, google switches to street view. Just zoom out 1 click and grab the screenshot. Then crop the photo so it is just your lot.

Not a very good shot but it is all I can seem to get.  This picture is a few years old so about the only value in posting it here is to show all the trees surrounding my garden.  The garden is in the lower middle portion of the picture surrounded on three sides by trees.  Thanks ralitaco I finally figured out how to save it to word and then save it as a jpg file.

yolos wrote:I get the picture of my house but I can't seem to copy it in order to post it. ?? Any help here.

Try "Ctrl+PrtScn" - that should copy what is on the screen.
Then paste that into word or publisher where you can crop it.

Okay, here's mine from a different angle. The new Rescue Garden will be in the front left, under the redwoods. The Salad Bar is right about where the address marker is. I can't wait for the next Google update, so we can see it from the air.  Katie's house is on the right. Barn in the back left. Chicken coop (now twice that size) in the middle back right.

very nice. How far back do you go?

Yolos, Beautiful spread. I think your house is as big as my whole lot!

I wonder who will be the first to have a drone camera showing pictures of their garden.
Should be quite interesting, I would love it.