Having a garden this year and wondering what you need to do before you start? I am going to share some tips on how to get your garden ready. You will be off to a great start before you know it.
How To Get Your Garden Ready
Spring is almost here and I bet your garden needs just a little bit of love to get it ready for this year’s planting season. Gardens need to be maintained and cleaned up twice a year to make sure that flowers keep blooming and vegetables grow big and bountiful. Here are some great tips on how to get your garden ready for spring.
Keep in mind that many of these steps could be done after the fall harvest. That way when spring rolls around, you could simply till up the soil and get started planting right away.
Plus, when you do it in the fall, it allows time for the compost, casting, and or fertilizer time to seep into the soil.
Clean it Up:
Cleaning might not be the most glamorous garden job but is one that is absolutely needed. This is the time to get out there and pull up any weeds, rake up dead leaves and limbs, and cut off any dead or diseased parts to any of your perennial plants.
As long as it isn’t diseased, toss all of that into your composter. Burn the plant it if was diseased, especially if it had a fungal disease. You want to do this clean-up in your raised beds, flower beds, vegetable garden, and in your container garden.
In addition to cleaning up the garden, make sure to clean your tools too! Mix a solution of vinegar, lemon juice, and water and clean up and wipe down any shovels, rakes, and hand tools that you use.
Time to Prep the Soil:
If you have the time, you want to prep your soil two weeks before you want to start planting. In already existing beds, you will want to add compost to raise the soil level back to the top. Also, add in soil amendments such as earthworm castings
.
Use either a hoe or a small rototiller and till this into the existing soil. Water it down really well and till it again the next day and water it down again. Let it rest for at least 48hours before planting.
If you are prepping a new bed, it is very similar. You will want to mix organic compost with potting soil, vermiculite or perlite, and then add in your organic soil amendments.
You can easily use a hoe for this unless you have a large garden bed, then you might want power tools. Water it down and let it rest so the microbial life can start occurring before you begin planting.
Make Plan:
After you have your garden area ready, you want to make a plan. It is always a good idea to rotate where you plant your plants.
When you plant the same plants year after year in the same spot, it robs the soil of the nutrients that the plant requires to grow.
Because not all plants require the same nutrients or amounts of them I should say, that is why it is a good idea to move them around. So say the tomatoes take a lot of calcium from the soil, if you planted them year after year in the same spot, the soil would become low in calcium in that area.
This also goes for the same types of plants. Like you would not want to plant peppers right behind a tomato season. You may have heard other farmers or gardeners talk about this as it is called crop rotation.
If you are looking for a more in-depth talk on crop rotation, you may find this post at Bonnie Plants helpful.
Now you know how to get your garden ready! Now grab your seeds and transplants and plant your spring garden!
Here are some other garden posts you may find helpful.
- Best Natural Fertilizer For Your Garden
- When to Plant Vegetables
- How To Help Plants Hit By Frost & Ways To Prepare Plants For Frost Coming
- Tips On How To Vacation Proof Your Garden
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