Hi, I have a easy raised bed garden plan if anyones interested. I'm new to gardening this is my 2nd year at it( I'm not an expert). I have a small house on a small lot( 82x128) that has a backyard with a southern exposure I live in southern RhodeIsland. Most of the yard is shade but some of it gets full sun. I have no idea why I started a garden, one day last March I just started turning over the soil in the sunny portion of my yard with a pitch fork and added limed to it. My girlfriend had an old mother earth organic garden book I found in the cellar that offered good garden information. I did'nt want to use chemicals in the garden so this book had an alternative method to growing veggies (and as it turn out flowers and other garden plants). I learned a raised bed will produce up to 40% more yield than a regular garden will. I'm a born and bred swamp yankee no joke, I'm a commercial Shellfisherman that has never spent a dime on anything I did'nt have to, I never throw any thing away either. I had some pressure treated 1"x10"x 16' that I scrounged at the dump in my garage I used this to build my beds. all you need to do is basically build a box with no top or bottom thats it,I used 2" deck screws to fasten it together. mine are 16 feet long by 4 feet long by 10" high. I wanted to use manure to fertilize the garden so I remembered seeing horse poop piled high at a park used by horsemen here in my state, since then I found 3 places I can get it free. I filled my beds half way up with the manure and the other half I used compost from a pile that I started a year earlier. That is it. my first year I grew 21 types of vegatables. they all grew like crazy. I gave more than half of my crop to my nieghbors cuz I had more than I could use. At the end of the year(oct.) after most of the plants had passed I removed the dirt and replaced it with manure and hay mixed together. I then built a removeable frame over the beds covered it with translucent plastic and had a hot bed. It produced cold hardy plants the whole winter And we had the 2nd worse winter on record here. go figure if I could do it anyone can, and it cost me 1.29$ for deck screws thats all I've invested in it plus my time. I just finished a raised bed flower garden for my girl I will have to see how it comes out. ps the computer I'm using came from the dump also I just installed a modem in it who said nothing in this world is free? Mike from rhodeIsland

Hello, Our home has four large evergreen shrub-trees that are far too large for the front of our home. The shrubs were there before we bought the home, and they actually seem to be more like trees. We want to remove them, but we're not sure where to start. Also, once they are removed, we don't know how to repair the area where they've been (the big holes that will be left.) Here is a picture of the home front: Thanks for any help.