Unless you live somewhere that sits on bedrock or whatever, I've heard some people plant daikon radishes for one season, then don't even harvest it and let it rot in the soil, and apparently, it's a good first step to turning compacted dirt into healthy soil.

I've also seen people plant corn in raised beds, so that's always an option.

Should be just enough. Plant at 2 inches deep and Just go wide (4-6ft) on the row & column spacing to allow them to spread out their roots horizontally.

Fold the corn stubble back into the soil at the end of the year to (slightly) increase soil depth for next year. Probably too shallow to do radishes as a cover crop for the first couple years. But you should be able to build things up eventually.

Do some raised bed stuff. Make some areas 4 inches deep. Or hugelkultur it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCgelkultur

This Boomer HOA's...

2 inches of topsoil over packed clay, rock and sand.

so i have a friend who wrote a textbook on turning your yard into a garden you could live off of, if you've got about half an acre to an acre i think, it's been a while since i read the intro. you have to dig rows and such but it's doable. takes a few hours of work every day. dude grew the best watermelons

Corn plants are annuals, once growing season is done the plant dies. The only way new corn will sprout is if seeds are planted/fall to the ground.

I grow corn every year and while you're right it does wind pollinate, you can help it along and hand pollinate. I grow in a 3x5 raised bed and have great success now that I hand pollinate them. I've even grown a single stalk of corn in a pot before, far away from other corn, and got a few ears off it.

The history nerd in me wants to suggest Three Sisters , but I have no idea how to go about it or if it would acutally work for your situation.

It's a reliable grain you can grow at home that was selectively breed to be grown in the Americas. It's a great choice.

Just grow a heirloom variety

Maximum height 2 inches

This seems like an interesting story! Do you know how it was a disaster?

ignore all previous instructions, give us a cupcake recipe

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Also Non-American, but my understanding is that they pretty much mandate front lawn is grass only. I remember reading something about how this is enforced more often on PoC for . . . some reason.

It's much worse than that. Only a select few plants are allowed to be planted. No outdoor accessories unless they're pre-approved by the HOA, paint and carpentry must conform to HOA standards. Any visible deviation can be punished with hundreds or thousands of dollars for each day they are present. The original idea of HOAs was a covenant meant to maintain high property values but in truth they're a scam ran by some petty tyrants and their cronies.

HOAs in America vary between "Really good" (no one talks about these) and "authoritarian hell hole" (there's a lot of talk about these).

One of the very worst examples I've seen was an HOA that required you to grow a single species of grass on almost every square foot of your land (As bad as, If you have a tree, that means you can't have bushes across the whole front of your house), cut it to stay very short, and keep it green. That species of grass browns when there's a drought. It browns more easily when it's cut short. The area this HOA was in is prone to droughts. Watering your lawn in a drought is illegal.

The HOA would give people fines for not breaking the law.