"Today fifty-eight million Americans spend Approximately thirty billion dollars every year to maintain more than twenty-three million acres of lawn... the lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week- enough to water eighty-one million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long... in fact, lawns use more equipment, labor, fuel, and agricultural toxins than industrial farming, making lawns the largest agricultural sector in the United States." (H.C. Flores, Food not Lawns, pg. 12)

Converting your yard from a resource depleting lawn into a productive garden is much easier than one may believe.

Step 1. Plotting your garden

The first step to transforming your lawn into a productive garden requires designing a layout of how you want your garden to look and the types of plants that you want to grow. It is important to make accuarate measurment of the space that you are working within as well as to consider the conditions of the yard that you are working in. This means obtaining information about the soil, climate, sun exposure, and other factors that may affect your choice of flora.

It is important when planning the crops that you want to grow, that you consider the niche and life spans of the plants.

Step 2. Removing the grass and improving the soil

a. Using a scythe, cut the grass to height that can be easily worked.

b. Using a pickaxe, remove the top layer of sod while breaking up the layers below.

c. Using a rake and a wheel barrow, remove organic material from the plot.

* This is a good time to start thinking about constructing a compost pile as a place to promote the decompostition of organic material into a nutrient rich soil amendment that can be incorporated into the garden during the next planting season.

d. Using stakes, a hammer, and string, plot each bed.

e. Using a wheelbarrow and a shovel add compost to the locations of future garden beds.

Step 3. Irrigation

Having selected the plants and established the beds to grow them in, you should start thinking about methods of maitenance, prirmarily watering. Using a watering can or the hose may be your first thought; both do a good job at distributing water; however, much more water is emitted than needed. This excess water, aside from being wastefull, is distibuted to places where plants are not, and promotes the return of the weeds that you worked so hard to remove.

I recommend drip irrigation as a solution. It is relatively cheap to purchase the parts and installation is comprehensive.

Drip irrigation allows for a 30-50% reduction in water usage while extending the watering times for plants. It prevents soil erosion and run off while discouraging weeds as well as fungal diseases. A drip irrigation system is accommodating to a dynamic garden by allowing for different spacing of emitters, different types of emitters, and different amounts of emission. By using a drip system of irrigation you are able to quantitatively analyze the water input per crop yield.

Step 4. Planting

Step 5. Mulching the beds

Step 6. Chipping the paths