You're right Neiklot...if you plan carefully you can get a lot out of a little bit of space. We're working on conditioning our soil. Where we live it's very alkaline and has a very, very high percentage of clay. We finally have a nice corner of the yard that is in pretty good shape, so we'll be planting heavily this spring. We did remove all the grass in the front yard and about a quarter of it in the back yard. We left some for the dogs to run and play on. We have several trees and ornamental flowers and plants but the rest of the space is going to be used to grow things we or the chickens can eat.
We can't make compost in large enough quantities fast enough to work into all the soil, so we just take little spots at a time, and it's working but it's an ongoing process. Now that we have the chickens, their bedding and natural "fertilizer" it should speed things up just a bit, LOL It's also very dry here, so we need to water it all. We've mulched very heavily all over and that has been one of the best things we did. We've been able to reduce watering by about 50% with it.
