I can't tell you how large a planting area you need but a 1200sf garden should be able to grow a LOT of produce, especially if you do succession plantings of fast crops likes greens and peas. I grew up with a much smaller dedicated vegetable garden than that and my folks canned and froze a lot of what we grew. There were 6 of us in my family. You might want to look into 'square foot gardening' for intensive planting in a smaller area. How much soil/compost you will need will depend entirely on how large the garden area is you decide upon. You will have to determine that before you know how much to add. If doing raised beds, it's pretty easy to calculate the volume each will contain (multiply the length x width x depth). If open beds, you'll need at least 6" of soil, more if you want to grow any root crops. Remember to keep the units the same - 6" = .5'. If you were going with the 30'x40' garden area again to a depth of 6", you'd need 600 cubic feet of soil or about 22.5 cubic yards. That's assuming you have no existing soil at your disposal. Here is a link that might be useful: square foot gardening

Thank you so much for the replies. parafly9: The ChemLawn guy didn't say our problem was JUST the lime, there was a list of things - but I didn't go into it since I was trying to keep the question specific to lime. So he said we need a lime application, grub control, thatching and slit-seeding. All of which we are going to try to do ourselves since there estimate is out of control! We really are beginners to this lawn care thing as we recently moved into our new home. So we've put down the Scotts 5 step program, we have a sprinkler system and watered every day in the summer. We put weed control in the summer which helped at first but they came back. So wejust continued watering not knowing we had a grub problem all summer long which probably factors into our lawn condition. We also had a bad weed problem which never went away and we kind of gave up on it. And by fall, the lawn was beyond hope - weeds, brown, and dieing. So we are hoping to fix it up for next year. Thats our story! :) So I think you guessed right - the lack of water and care probably is why it is brown - and not the lime issue. thank you for your help - we have 10,000 sq feet of lawn and so we will buy lime according to what you said - but yes we will buy a kit and take it from there. My main concern was how much to put and if I can do it with the grass seeds - which you answered. How often do you have to put the lime - you mentioned doing it twice a year? I guess you test your soil in spring and apply accordingly? Or do you just apply lime twice a year, every year??? billl - Thats for your responses as well - Yes I am going to look into buying either the kit or calling the township tomrorow. Does the township charge for this service? Any idea how much it is in HD or lowes? As mentioned above - yes our lawn has got a lot of other issues - so the browning could be due to that. Since I am new at lawn care - I wasn't sure which was the main cause - I guess it is a combination of all.

Gean, I have thought about that, and my ideas on the subject are these: I have no moral obligation to conduct my life so as to avoid possible waste on the part of posterity. How can I know anyway what will happen after I'm dead, and, as long as I'm responsible and positive in my lifetime, why should I worry about it? True, perhaps the garden will end up in the hands of insensitive jerks who will bulldoze it, but on the other hand it may become the property of unspeakably thrilled horticulturalists. If I don't have to sell our place out of financial necessity before I die, it will go to our daughter. There's a good chance she won't want to live here--but then perhaps she will--and I don't think she's going to be a fanatical gardener like me--but maybe I'm mistaken. Or she could marry a husband who loves to garden. Or I could establish a foundation to maintain the garden and keep it open for visits and teaching. I don't know what the future will bring. About the maintenance, I already have more garden than I can keep up with. As I said, the reason I'm in such a hurry now is because I want to get the heavy work done while my husband can still do it: we need to dig our holes NOW, and afterwards the lilacs can grow in peace. I don't see why I shouldn't be pruning roses, pulling grass, and repotting plants when I'm eighty. My desire has always been a low-maintenance garden, without watering system, elaborate fertilizing regimen, or plants that require a significant amount of work on an ongoing basis. Peonies are my kind of plant: once you've dug the holes and planted them, you're basically done forever. I work on getting the soil in good condition and then planting it with plants that will grow well, protect each other, suffocate weeds, and so on: I'm working on creating a relatively stable ecosystem. Obviously it will never be completely labor free, being a garden, but I think I can make a garden that will be able to stand up to some neglect. My garden isn't a financial investment: the money comes from income that's there to spend, not out of retirement savings. I'm like cweathersby: my money goes to the garden, and most of the garden money goes for plants. My clothes come from Goodwill, and I shop there on half price day. The car we drive is the worst wreck in the township. I don't care: what matters to me are the hyacinths I planted years ago that come up faithfully, and to my surprise appear to be seeding as well. I didn't know hyacinths did that. The peonies that are budding now, the snow crocuses that have somehow spread down into the big garden, the wildish area where the Viburnum burkwoodii is getting ready to flower and where the wild hellebore we transplanted two years ago has caught and is growing. The garden is a possible source of future income, all the same. I think it can be a workable display and teaching garden, something our province can really use. I'd hope to earn at least enough money to hire help now and then to keep the garden going. I don't believe I'm going to starve in old age, but I have no expectations of even relative affluence. The garden is an investment in another sense: when I can no longer afford to buy many new plants, I'll have a good supply of material to swap for plants, and to give as gifts. If you can give, you're rich. A final word about bulldozed gardens. Human life is full of waste: I realize this when I see old abandoned houses and barns around here that are fine examples of brick- and stonework and that are collapsing because no one has any use for them any more. Lord help us, just think of war. Yes, my garden may meet a dreary end one day--or it may not--but does that mean it wasn't worth doing? And not just for my own joy. I profoundly believe that my garden is not just for me: I certainly don't deserve such a large and magnificent share of the world's largesse. I don't want to be like the giant who chased all the children out of his beautiful garden so he could enjoy it all on his own. I give cuttings and rooted plants, bits of succulents, bulbs and iris tubers. Even if my garden is destroyed (and maybe they'll miss some of the better hidden parts), it will live on in other people's gardens. When someone comes to visit the garden and see plants she's never heard of, or roses such as she didn't know existed, or a style of gardening that she didn't know was possible--carries those memories away and perhaps puts some of them into practice in her own patch of ground--my garden will live. Permanence--immortality--call it what you will--is not the issue: the patient, fatiguing, and often frustrating cultivation of goodness and honesty and beauty is. To quote Dickens, who is writing about a man's death at the end of a rightly lived life: "It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!" As the actions of the good man live after his death, so the shared garden will never die. Melissa

glib -- I like this idea! Thanks -- and I just happen to have a pile of unfinished compost. wayne -- the tilling I did this year, to make things easier, was done with an electric mantis tiller, and it basically pulverized the soil. My old way of potatoes (the hard way) was some digging. This way certainly seems damaging to the soil structure, since there are no apartment complexes left for the SFW folks to live in. Maybe a rototiller would do less damage? But I can't handle a rototiller by myself, so I bought this mantis and the blades are sharp and fast.