Ripping out the Old Shed and Starting a new Garden

We did it! We killed the rusty old shed in our back yard. I feel like a little kid doing a happy dance. Picture me spinning around in circles pumping my fists into the air. That’s how great it feels. In our backyard we had two sheds eating up quite a bit of space. One of the sheds actually houses our backyard equipment. The other shed just stored remodel trash that did not make it into the dumpsters. This second shed, besides being redundant leaked, had a large population of spiders, and the doors were broken. Both sheds were sitting on concrete pads, and quite honestly we liked where the second shed was better in terms of our yard, however we can’t afford to purchase a new shed right now, so we are just working with what we have. It’s a nice spot with lots of sunlight and ripping out the shed has made our yard fill so much bigger!

After we ripped out the old shed, we started on our new plot to make over our backyard into a great garden space. My husband picked up a book on homesteading in the backyard, and since we have really enjoyed our gardens in the past, it’s been fun to plan a bigger space. We plan on filling the space where the old shed was with nice raised garden beds. This should help to keep it nice and tidy. We are going to put up a little fence around the space to keep Tesla out.

To get rid of the metal, we just stuck it out front with a free sign. The metal was literally gone within 5 minutes. To get rid of the yard debris, we loaded up our little truck and took it down to the nearby landscaping store. It only cost $7 a load and they take all the large pieces of wood we can’t get into our recycling bin. We rented a jackhammer from Home Depot for 4 hours to break up the concrete pad.  It only took about 2 hours, but we were glad to have the extra time to help with our aching backs! We took two loads of concrete and stone to the landscaping place and dumped them for only $10, which is nice because it’s gone. We had a pile of stone in the corner of the yard from the previous owner that was a nice place for spiders and nothing else, so we cleaned up that area too. Erik read this article about making stepping stone chunks out of the concrete as you go, so he created 12 big pieces to act as nice stepping stores in our new garden area. The stones are nice, and its fun that we got them from the pad, plus it meant less rock for us to carry and get rid of! The best part!

The new garden area is already looking cleaner. The next step is to build the raised beds and load them with dirt and plants. Hopefully we will get to them this weekend. After that we are going to design a nice little fence for around the garden. Hopefully its strong enough to withstand the tornado known as Tesla.

Last week we also cleaned up a little side spot on the back yard. Erik weeded it and laid down the fabric garden netting. This nice little space joins the large raised bed Erik created this fall. He built a tall garden bed to help with drainage problems in the back corner of the yard. It actually the nicest spot in our yard. With the new garden coming though, it might have some competition.