Author Topic: Anyone else with just a big back garden? (Read 5276 times)

r+lchick · « **on:** September 25, 2009, 03:52:22 pm »

I love this site but a lot of you guys have acerage and small holdings. Anyone with just a big back garden out there in surbubia? What do you guys do with it? Would love to know if anyone is in the same position as me. I don't want acerage and have no intention of moving to a smallholding. The ones with acerage, your help is invaluable to us little guys. Thanks for a great site.
Ros

sandy · « **Reply #1 on:** September 25, 2009, 03:57:18 pm »

Me me me!! I do, I only have a back garden and it's mainly gravel with some trees and a small pond but I do have soil borders and I keep 18 chickens and a Duck and a Drake, love them, I know lot's of others also just have gardens!!!!!!! I wish I would have kept chickens when my children were small, much better pets as they re entertaining and productive plus easy to look after!!

doganjo · « **Reply #2 on:** September 25, 2009, 04:09:40 pm »

Me too - just half an acre front and back, house in the middle - but it's a cultivated garden not a field. The back is half in gravel, half in grass and I've planted trees at random spots over that - some fruit, plus an acer, a silver birch and a rowan. My garage doubles as a tool store and kennel fro two of my dogs. Also have a garden shed that doubles as a hen/duck house sometimes too and needs a good clean out. At the front there's more grass with fruit trees and a small raised bed for veg which were a disaster - too low a bed, so will make it hight for next year so grass and clover don't take it over. Also my chicken and duck pens and sheds. And a nice little dribble of a brook down one side with hugey trees and shrubs at the other side - ideal for the dogs to hunt through.

little blue · « **Reply #3 on:** September 25, 2009, 09:04:21 pm »

And me!!
Never really measured ours,and anyway an acre is too conceptual for me, cant visualise how big that would be!!
Everything is 'penned in' for safe keeping, we have,all in separate sheds/pens/hutches/runs:
2 kune kune gilts.
2 goats and kk boar,
4 hens and silkie cockerel,
12 ex-batts and a gold pencilled hamburg hen,
3 quail,
2 guinea pigs and 2 buck rabbits (double hutch - known as 'top floor bunnies'!)
4 doe rabbits
1 buck rabbit (his guinea pig pal escaped, and he gets picked on by the others, incestual abuse!)
And 3 cats, a german shepherd, and a very elderly poodle.

Costs us a fortune in shed paint!!
And flowers, veg and fruit beds, and a tourer caravan in our front yard.

Anything is possible, if your set your mind to it....

Unicorn · « **Reply #4 on:** September 25, 2009, 09:14:12 pm »

ME too - well I only had a little back garden when I moved to Ireland, and I had six hens, lots of fruit bushes, apple trees, plums, a lovely herb garden, and green fingers with mucky nails.

Then I met the OH and he was used to having 65 acres and wandering the land and forest, so my little house and garden were not enough to keep the two of us entertained.

I learned a lot from my little back garden, and encourage more and more friends to grow some fruit and veg, we used to sell hens to people for gardens, our main customers were 15 year old boys and it was great to see their faces and visit their gardens full of hens.

We are not large now - we have 5 acres at our home farm, and we have use of forestry that we rent, plus have a few acres at OH's Dad's farm if we need it.

The way forward is for everyone, no matter if they only have a window box, sto start eating their own food, and if room, get your own hens for eggs.

Smallholding is different to farming, we do not get any grants, single payments or other benefits as we have only 5 acres that we own, and its hard worek, but so beneficial.

Hope you don't mind me tagging in here, but my little garden got me here, and I still have great memories of
the hens and the herb garden in less that 1/4 of a acre - you can do a lot if you plan it well.

Fluffywelshsheep · « **Reply #5 on:** September 25, 2009, 09:17:13 pm »

I have the land around the house (end of terraced in a council estate) front garden is lawn. back garden is slabbed, Side garden is lawn and down to the front bit which has shrubs etc in it.

I only really uses the side bit and i have two raised bed in it with pots etc some pots and compost bag in slabbed back garden area. No live stock but would love chickens but hubby is worried that people might come in an attack the chocks.

Sorry i have no idea of sizes but roughly 20 foot by 80 foot for the sided garden but only about 20 by 60 foot is used and the slabbed area has pots and compost bags on it.

Linz

doganjo · « **Reply #6 on:** September 25, 2009, 09:34:22 pm »

Linz has a lot crammed into that garden - far better than my acre - whether you can visualise it or not, hers is better in my opinion. Grass is non productive, non edible, except when my chooks and dooks are wandering round it, but I can't afford to get anyone in to do what I want done to it at the moment and I'm not fit enough - but ONE DAY!

sellickbhoy · « **Reply #7 on:** September 25, 2009, 10:33:38 pm »

i've half an acre - all lawn

slowly being taken over by raised beds, fruit trees, greenhouses, but still mostly just grass for the dog to run around on

i'll be cornering off a wee bit for chickens in a month - once i'm back from thailand

though i'm not in suburbia - my neighbours are cows and horses

JD · « **Reply #8 on:** September 26, 2009, 09:21:10 am »

I just have a big back garden on a corner site with a very busy main road on one side and the national football stadium behind in the suburbs of Glasgow. When the children were growing up the garden was a playground for them because they couldn't go outside due to the main roads. But now they have 'flown the coop' its my playground. I started off with some soft fruit and a few veggies. Then I came across this wonderful site and got a yearning for keeping a few chickens. I signed up for Rosemary's course and now have 3 chickens with maybe another two in the spring. Being a city boy all my life I cant imagine what an acre or half acre looks like its just a back garden to me.
JD

doganjo · « **Reply #9 on:** September 26, 2009, 04:07:47 pm »

An acre is about 70 yards by 70 yards - give or take a bit (actual size is 4840 sq yds) - 4900 square yards. If you measure the length and breadth of your garden and multiply them together, then divide that into 4840, you'll get the fraction of an acre.

For instance say your garden is 30 yards long by 20 yards wide - that's 600 square yards, divide that into 4840 and you get 8 - so you have about one eighth of an acre.

northfifeduckling · « **Reply #10 on:** September 26, 2009, 09:30:19 pm »

me, too. OH says it's 3/4 of an acre. I've divided it up in former lawn now inhabited by 10 ducks and some hens soon and the former wild area, now more and more veggies fighting with weeds, lol. I'd love to have goats, but my neighbour who knows said we don't have enough space

doganjo · « **Reply #11 on:** September 26, 2009, 09:41:06 pm »

I want to divide mine up but don't really know where to start - can't do the work myself so need to save up over the winter and get it done in the Spring just before planting time.