Soil Preparation - Part 1

Okay, now you have your seeds, you potting mix, your pots, you have successfully started your little sprouts, and the snow is finally gone. You are excited. Finally your going to grow a vegetable garden. Yippee! Then you look out the kitchen window and discover a yard full of nothing but grass. Bummer. But don't get in the dumps. You still can plant that first garden and things will only get better from this year on.

First select a site that gets at least 6 or more hours of sunlight with in reasonable distance of your taps. Lay out where you want you rows to go and how long. I would suggest 10 to 3o feet as a reasonable row size. You will want to be able to plant enough of any type of vegetable to feed your family. This first year will be the hardest, especially if you are doing it by hand rather than having a rototiller do the initial turn over. If you have access to either a person with a tractor/rototiller (the easiest way to start) or even a heavier duty garden rototiller, then I would suggest that you work your soil completely with it and eliminate the steps that follow. If you are starting from scratch with a lawn or pasture, try and have the garden worked at least two times before planting season, about 10 days to 2 weeks apart. This will help destroy the grass and weed roots and give you a much "cleaner" soil to work with.

But getting back to the old fashioned hand turning method. As soon as the snow goes, cover your garden area with a couple of layers of cardboard, weighted down as it will help start killing off the lawn grass and weeds. Now mark out where your rows will be. Work the garden one row at a time. Lift off the cardboard about 2 feet wide for the full length of the row. Take a sharp spade and slice the grass along each edge between the cardboard layers, then cut length wise two more times so that the slices are about 6" wide. Go back and cut these slice horizontally every foot. Starting at one end of the row, lift the sod out and beat off most the soil back into the garden row. Take the turf and stack some place out of the way, upside down. Continue doing this until you have a row 2 feet wide the full length of your garden. Now get out your spading fork and break up the soil well, removing rocks and other non soil components. Sprinkle a handful of general all purpose slow release fertilizer, a couple of handfuls of epsom salts (magnesium and phosphate) and a couple of handfuls of bone meal for every 20' feet of row. Remix the soil in each bed. Now move the cardboard back another 6 inches on each side, slice and cross slice. This time you turn the sod upside down right back on the edge of your row. Pull the cardboard back over the turned over sod and mulch well (3-6") with lawn clippings and or chopped up leaves. Moisten the whole area well. Leave 3 feet between each turned over area. You can mulch these strips with lawn clippings, leaves, even sawdust. This summer, these will be your pathways. In the fall after harvest, if you have the time, You can do your pathways the same way as you did your original beds. If you are into raised beds, like we are you can shovel your new pathway beds up onto your existing new beds, take your fork and work the two layers together.

Now getting back to the turf that you have stacked up in some out of the way place. Sprinkle a couple hand of high nitrogen fertilizer over the top of the stack. Wet it well, cover with cardboard, so light can not penetrate the covering and cover with a tarp. Occasionally check to see that it is still moist (not soggy) and recover. In a year or two you will have some lovely soil which you can return to your garden beds.