Trees are extremely important in sustainable agriculture. They pull nutrients from deep in the ground. As trees drop leaves/are pruned and the material composted and added to the garden it partially compensates for the surface nutrient loss from growing and harvesting annual food crops. Trees and perennials mimic mature the ecosystems of forests with understory plants. Once established a garden designed to mimic nature mostly takes care of itself.
Of course trees take years to mature so planting them soon is a priority. So far we have four, a Hass avocado, a dwarf sweet lime, a dwarf Meyer lemon, and a Goji berry tree. The avocado tree may grow to thirty feet eventually. The lemon and goji will top out at eight to ten and the lime five or six.
Joining them next year will be Mission figs. We sprouted them from cuttings taken from ancient and hardy tree in Old Town. It is quite possible this tree is a close descendent of the figs planted at the original San Diego Mission. Whether or not this is true one thing is certain, the cuttings are vigorous. We expected only about half of the six cuttings to take but they all took. We only wanted two fig trees. One has found a home with a coworker, but that leaves three that still need adoption.
This first group of trees is planted on a slope on the north side of our back yard. To insure good drainage and efficient water use, I dug ditches between the trees so that watering the top most will in turn water the lower trees. I filled the ditches with broken tile saved from the living room. I plan to cover the tile filled drains and the entire area with mulch. Eventually this little grove will be watered by greywater from our laundry.
I didn't set out to build a surrealist chicken coop. The unorthodox angles are the result of the conservative use of salvaged materials, the proximity of the fence and the fact that I was basically making it up as I went along. The building of the hen house I described here. For the run I compared lengths of boards rather than measured for most of the project. I built the door first out of the plywood piece left over from flooring the hen house. The frame for the door I sized to match the height and width of the hen house and then built the crazy modified “A” frame to join them. Then I painted with freecyled paint and stapled on hardware cloth near the ground and poultry netting higher up. By using so many salvaged parts I kept the total cost down to about $150, almost all which was spent on wire. 
