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Sorry. I tried being quick but ended up unclear. I meant proper as measured by my own ambitions.

I've mentioned my first year of gardening a few times in the past. It was successful but there were numerous challenges and obvious areas for improvement. I do need amendments and I need enough to compensate for a large area of clay soil. I'd also like tree and root guards, a large quantity of mulch and also sand/pebble, better trellises, and some rain barrels. I think I'm going to need to rent a tiller, and and aerator might also be a good idea. A clean space for a seedling station and tools (including grafting) would be very helpful. That all adds up.

A smaller or less ambitious garden will definitely yield harvests with less inputs. I've tended several smaller, cheaper gardens in the past. More people should garden no matter how simple, and at the entry level it is indeed very affordable. Your comment is very true in that context.

However my current garden is more complex and I would like to scale it up to a large portion of the yard. For example I have grape vines, berries, and young fruit trees. I've had to make compromises to stay within my budget. They need more active protection, monitoring, and fertilizing. They need more help overcoming the poor, compressed soil. I've had to do various emergency transplants to areas of better nutrients or manually loosened soil. It frustrates me sometimes, hence the wish for money.

With a larger budget I could implement everything at once, rather than doing it piecemeal and racing the seasons. I would be able to justify things like automated irrigation (the piping is not especially cheap even though I will do the system myself). I could develop more landrace cultivars based on prime stock. I would love a greenhouse but that would be multiples of the cost of an irrigation system even. I'm trying to assist adaptation of various species to the local climate and I've already lost a few good soldiers. Oh, and I have an expensive fascination with swales.

Anyway, the point is that my idea of "proper" for my own garden is a bit eccentric... and the soil sucks.