INTRO:
In the 10 months after I started this thread my backyard has undergone a transformation from an overgrown mature landscape into an increasingly productive garden plot. This thread (as well as the “chapter 2” thread, which picked up in January 2010 where this one left off http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=12690.0 ) documents the progress I have made teaching myself the most basic and fundamental skill of producing my own food.
My home is in a downtown historic district in northern Georgia and at the widest point my lot is only 70 feet wide. Not large by “homestead” standards, but 3 times the size of what the Dervaes family lot that produces over 3 tons of food annually.
Jack asked me to write this intro so that this might be linked via “Save our Skills”. Besides a square foot garden construction primer, these threads include a pretty nice rain catch system design and installation, some basic fence and shed building, installation of an asparagus bed, as well as the beginnings of my experiments with high density bamboo trellis. Mainly they include a lot of pictures, around 350 at last count.
Hopefully these give confidence. I possess no formal training in carpentry or agriculture or really anything hands on; I have a “whitest of white”-collar career.
Prepare to learn by reading but learn by doing.
Make some mistakes. Kill some plants. Grow some food. Enjoy the freedom that follows.
cohutt________________________________________________________________________________
June 2009:
I previously posted a thread about a mega compost effort I undertook in anticipation of a new SFG to be constructed in my backyard. The compost cooked off faster than I thought it would so I got busy turning 400 sq ft of zoysia sod into 5 raised beds. (I took some pics along the way with a decent camera as well as my crackberry camera, so the quality isn't consistent. )
First- my backyard as it was, as viewed from my back porch/sunroom, with the laid out square (just under 20'x20').
Lawn:

Lizzie's house overlooking the lawn:

(Lizzie was the last person to live in the house- it was built as servant's quarters to the main house back in 1870)
Next I started pulling the sod manually and decided after a row that a sodcutter would in fact be the only way I could pull the sod up before the growing season was over.
Sod up and moved to other spots in the yard:


Next- leveling and building the beds