Spring has sprung, as they say, and it is now the time to start working the soil. For me a good garden has been a long time coming. While I love the idea of growing my own food vegetables are not something I am familiar with cooking (future blog series).
After buying seeds and starting them inside I needed to find a place to cultivate. My yard is rather poor soil. The area in the front is moss covered and when you try to dig down you hit 3 inch rocks in sand. This is a typical dirt fill that many companies use to fill in holes or level off angles. I believe they used this fill to regrade my front lawn to combat water movement downhill.
Any soil will do as long as it is well drained and have not standing water for long period of time. We will amend the soil with what it needs to succeed so that is less important at the start. The main thing you want your location to have is ,at least, six hours of sunlight. With that amount of sustained light full-sun plants, which most crops are, will do well.
After picking a spot that has full sun and good drainage we need to remove other unwanted seed pressure. Removing the grass and weeds can be intensive or very easy depending on how much time you have. If you planned well ahead you could smother the area with an opaque tarp. This will blanch and kill all plant material dependant on the sun for energy. You can use cardboard or any other way to remove light from an area. This will destroy vegetation but leave the seed bank in place to deal with later.
I used a pick Mattock tool to "grub" up the grass and roots of the weeds. This chunk of earth that is removed with the tool is flipped over to let the grass die and begin to degrade. We want to leave the grass and other organic material in the garden to add organic material and keep all the microbes inside the soil. If you want to remove all material and begin fresh I advise replacing it with soil and compost mixed.
After turning over the entire area that I would like for my garden I added Organic Compost without any heavy metals or anaerobic microbes. Anaerobic microbes are the ones that cause disease and problems in the garden. Putting down a small amount of compost and cultivating it in helps to blend the soil life already there with the ones in the compost. Be careful though, excessive tilling can destroy fungal hyphae that you need to keep intact. In fact, after this initial tilling, this should never be done again as to not disturb the soil life and destroy the precious funguses that are doing all the work.
Once the soil has been fully integrated you can top dress with compost and mulch. For food gardens there has been a lot of success with straw on top of the soil but you can use any kind of mulch. Just realize anything you put on your garden now will eventually make it into your food. I would advise against using rubber mulch or anything that may have unknown chemicals in it. Using fresh wood chips or leaves will work but will also tie up some nutrients as the biota breaks them down to be useful as future plant food.
No you are ready. Wait until the evenings no longer freeze and we are outside the ability for frost to happen and you can transplant your seedlings. You may need to protect them against the wildlife in your yard. You don't want squirrels going through your crops when you are not home.
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