Converting to yard to garden. Need help!

12 years ago

Hi everyone,

We are brand new to this. We bought our house a few years ago and have a very large backyard in northeastern Indiana. This summer we want to convert a big portion of it to grow our own food, but we have no idea where to start. So we thought we would open it up to suggestions. The photo is of one half of the yard. I will post the other half shortly.
We don't mind power tools and have a crew of people we can have come help. We would like to keep everything cheap but are not opposed to spending money for quality where we need to.

Thanks for reading. We will keep posting our progress as we go and look forward to you suggestions.

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Comments (3)

Primotack
Original Author
12 years ago
Here is the other half of the yard. The tree in this photo was an ash and had to be cut down. That was a sad day.
Primotack
Original Author
12 years ago
Finally this is our lot. This is a quick visual of our lot. Everything in green is wide opened for us to convert.
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BluenoseDee
12 years ago
Wow! What a great space to garden!

Three years ago, we decided to dig up a large patch of our front lawn to use as a garden in addition to the containers we were planting in along the side of the house. The next year, we dug up two more patches, so now we have more garden space than "yard". We also bought a large truckload of topsoil to spread over two of the plots, as the ground in those areas was pretty hard.

We did it by digging up the sod and stacking it in pyramids with a layer of manure between each two layers of sod. This is labour intensive but if you have lots of help, it is one way to approach the task. The sod takes a long time to break down, so if you don't want it hanging around on the periphery of your property, I'd recommend taking it to your community compost program, if you have one.

Lasagna gardening is very popular and I have read positive things about it. It seems like a great way to convert lawn to garden relatively quickly. I would have loved to have experimented with this method (and the one I'll mention in a minute) on one of out garden plots. There are lots of videos on YouTube that show how to do this method. It looks pretty easy and while there is work involved, it might not be as back-breaking at digging up sod piece by piece.

There is another method I am intrigued by that uses compost and woodchips and involves no digging or tilling, ever! It is featured in the film, "Back to Eden", which can be watched for free online. It can be used with in-ground gardens or large containers, too.

Please keep us posted as to which method(s) you try and which you liked best. :)