I meant to post on how to start seeds - but I forgot. Now it is getting a bit late to start some things from seed - the ideal time might have been a few weeks ago, at least for tomatoes and basil, which are somewhat slow to get started.
On the other hand, if it stays so cold this spring, maybe this is the right time - it might be too cold to plant them out for many more weeks (and they need about 4 weeks before they are large enough to transplant out). Most years in Toronto it's warm enough by mid to late May.
It's always hard to guess for sure: even before global warning, the weather was very unpredictable. You just have to decide!
So if you decide would like to start seedlings, you can read this post from last year.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
What to Expect Now
Most seeds at this time of year take quite a while to germinate, especially in the very cool weather and cool soil we have this year. Don't worry if you don't see anything for a week or two after your plant. Peas, chives, and chard take even longer, while the mustardy ones: arugula, mizuna, and mustard, tend to sprout a bit sooner.
The most important thing is to make sure the soil stays moist the whole time while the seeds are germinating and also while the plants are extremely tiny.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to wipe out the tiniest seedlings if you water them too heavily.
So being very careful not to kill anything, keep the soil moist. In the current weather that may mean you don't need to do anything, if occasional rain falls on your patch or containers. But if it becomes dry again and warms up, you will need to water every few days for a while.
Once the seedlings have more than the first two leaves, they will have generated enough roots to gather moisture from a bit wider and deeper and it won't be so critical to keep the soil moist right at the surface. (But you'll want to make sure it doesn't dry out deeper down.)
By the way, you may have to replant peas this year. At least mine don't seem to have survived: in very cold spring weather they seem to fail to germinate and just rot in the soil.
It can be hard to tell what sprouts are weeds and which ones are your plants. That's one way careful planting helps, because you can see the pattern when the seedlings start growing.
Here is what arugula, mustard, and mizuna look like when they sprout:
Notice the approximate straight lines of the rows. The spacing in my rows is pretty irregular. As I mentioned, I try to get them evenly spaced, but handling the tiny mustard seeds is a bit hard, and I'm not too patient.
In any case, a little thinning is still much easier than a lot of thinning. Once the seedlings have grown a little, you can pull out the smallest duplicates, being very careful not to hurt the ones you are trying to leave in. With these types of plants (arugula, mustard, etc.), you can wash and eat the sprouts you pull out: they are very delicious! Of course, don't eat seedlings with poisonous leaves, like tomato seedlings. But all of the early plants for this blog have edible leaves - including the peas.
Even at this stage, the leaves of different vegetable types are often distinctive, however. These mustardy sprouts all have those very distinctive heart-shaped leaves. (Broccoli and Cauliflower have the same shape, since they're in the same family. Their seeds all look quite similar too.) Here is a close-up:
Peas look completely different - I'll post a picture when mine are up.
You may also now start to find weed sprouts as well. I have seen some now. As long as they're outside your rows and you are sure they are not the seeds you planted, you can pull them out as you see them. But there's no hurry to pull them out if you are not sure - better safe them sorry! I have, sadly, occasionally weeded my own vegetables. Hopefully once you have your own seedlings clearly growing and identifiable, then you will be able to tell for sure which are the weeds.
The most important thing is to make sure the soil stays moist the whole time while the seeds are germinating and also while the plants are extremely tiny.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to wipe out the tiniest seedlings if you water them too heavily.
So being very careful not to kill anything, keep the soil moist. In the current weather that may mean you don't need to do anything, if occasional rain falls on your patch or containers. But if it becomes dry again and warms up, you will need to water every few days for a while.
Once the seedlings have more than the first two leaves, they will have generated enough roots to gather moisture from a bit wider and deeper and it won't be so critical to keep the soil moist right at the surface. (But you'll want to make sure it doesn't dry out deeper down.)
By the way, you may have to replant peas this year. At least mine don't seem to have survived: in very cold spring weather they seem to fail to germinate and just rot in the soil.
It can be hard to tell what sprouts are weeds and which ones are your plants. That's one way careful planting helps, because you can see the pattern when the seedlings start growing.
Here is what arugula, mustard, and mizuna look like when they sprout:
Notice the approximate straight lines of the rows. The spacing in my rows is pretty irregular. As I mentioned, I try to get them evenly spaced, but handling the tiny mustard seeds is a bit hard, and I'm not too patient.
In any case, a little thinning is still much easier than a lot of thinning. Once the seedlings have grown a little, you can pull out the smallest duplicates, being very careful not to hurt the ones you are trying to leave in. With these types of plants (arugula, mustard, etc.), you can wash and eat the sprouts you pull out: they are very delicious! Of course, don't eat seedlings with poisonous leaves, like tomato seedlings. But all of the early plants for this blog have edible leaves - including the peas.
Even at this stage, the leaves of different vegetable types are often distinctive, however. These mustardy sprouts all have those very distinctive heart-shaped leaves. (Broccoli and Cauliflower have the same shape, since they're in the same family. Their seeds all look quite similar too.) Here is a close-up:
Peas look completely different - I'll post a picture when mine are up.
You may also now start to find weed sprouts as well. I have seen some now. As long as they're outside your rows and you are sure they are not the seeds you planted, you can pull them out as you see them. But there's no hurry to pull them out if you are not sure - better safe them sorry! I have, sadly, occasionally weeded my own vegetables. Hopefully once you have your own seedlings clearly growing and identifiable, then you will be able to tell for sure which are the weeds.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Planting Early Spring Vegetables
If you have finished the previous steps (including Things You Need and Preparing Your Plot), and if you're growing any of the early spring vegetables:
Watch the weather forecast, and try to seize a good day when it comes. Light showers are okay, but heavy rain will usually make the soil too muddy for planting for a day or two afterward. A string of warm, sunny days after you plant helps speed up germination and reduce the chances of the seeds rotting instead of growing.
Temperatures might still be especially cool for planting peas right now. Check the weather forecast, and if you see a few days in a row with temperatures well above 10 celsius, that's the best time to plant. If you plant peas in cold weather (like the forecast for the next week), you will probably have fewer seeds successfully grow into full plants.
If you're not ready to plant yet, don't fret, just go step by step through the previous posts. The next month or so is prime time for planting these. And after that, they will still grow, but some of these will typically finish their life cycle very quickly and not produce as much. (Chard, chicory, and chives are exceptions: they will last all summer, and chives will last for years!)
On the other hand, if you're only planting late-spring things this year, you have to wait. The late spring vegetables (tomatoes, beans, etc.) will all die if you plant them outside now!
If you haven't already bought your supplies, including seeds, obviously you need to do that now.
When it's time to plant, you should also get your drawing of your layout, which you stored somewhere safe after making it a few weeks ago.
One more thing: this is another very detailed post, trying to help out people who are really unsure how to plant things. I am happy to say that after this, the posts will generally get much shorter, since much less detail will be needed. (I like to write, but trying to say everything has been a bit grueling! And I'm sure I've forgotten things, at that. Please let me know in the comments about things you find unclear or confusing.)
Soak peas overnight before you plant them.
If you are growing peas, it's best to soak them in water at room temperature for about 24 hours beforehand. Before they start to grow, they need to soak up a lot of water. That happens only very slowly in the soil if you plant them dry, so it will take longer for them to sprout. The cool soil temperatures also make germination slow. If you forget to soak them the evening before you plant, soaking them for even a few hours before you plant them is better than nothing.
Now, even if you plant them dry, they will eventually sprout, so you could just ignore this advice. On the other hand, if you do soak them, you really need to plant them within about 24 hours, or they will start to sprout before you plant them and the sprouts will be very easily damaged when you handle them to plant them.
Also remember that your peas will be planted about 3 cm apart, in a row, or in a circle around some supporting structure, so try to only soak the amount you will need. Extra seeds can be kept until next year, as long as they stay very dry. Any peas that you soak will have to be planted or thrown away.
Preparing the Soil
Every time you plant in any area, dig in plenty of compost with your trowel, right where you are going plant the seeds. This is the only reason you can plant so intensively: because you are constantly adding rich organic matter back into the soil.
(Note: if you just filled new containers with compost and soil, or just prepared new ground by single- or double-digging in lots of compost, then just this one time, you don't have to dig in any more compost. But next time you plant there, you will have to add compost!)
To prepare to plant, first, spread an inch or so of compost over the area you are going to plant. Then, using your trowel, break up the earth where you are planting and mix it well with the compost. Mix as deep as you can with the trowel. The deeper the loose the soil is, the easier it will be for your plants to form healthy root systems. Try to break up most of the obvious lumps of soil, and generally remove stones that are bigger than 1 cm or so.
If I'm planting stuff that goes close together filling an area, like arugula, then I prepare the whole area all at once (as I described above). If I'm planting stuff that will go in a row, like peas along a fence, I prepare just the narrow row, still mixing in the compost as deep as I can go with the trowel. If I'm planting individual seedlings that I bought in pots, then I prepare just the hole where I'm going to plant the seedling. The idea here is to avoid cultivating too much area that you aren't planting anything in. If you do that, you will encourage weeds to grow. Disturbing the soil causes weed seeds to start growing, and putting in compost there will feed them. So you can be strategic when you prepare for planting, and try to cultivate and compost just where you need to.
Planting Tiny Seeds
Mizuna, arugula, and mustard greens all have extremely tiny seeds. Traditionally they are scattered ("broadcast"), but this makes them grow irregularly and too close to each other, so they have to be thinned later, which is quite laborious. It's also a waste of seed. And if you don't get around to thinning them, they will compete with each other and stay small and spindly. Furthermore, it's harder to weed them when they are irregularly spaced: for one thing, you can't see as clearly which ones are the weeds and which are the vegetable plants. That's even harder if you are planting something for the first time and you don't even know what its seedlings will look like!
So though it's tricky to plant them one at a time at a regular, optimal spacing, it is actually easier in the long run.
When planting very tiny small seeds, after the compost is dug in, I use the trowel to try to level out the soil a bit. Then I make shallow, narrow trenches in the soil - maybe about 1 or 2 cm deep. I make these parallel so the bottoms of the trenches are the recommended distance apart for the plants. (Say, 5 cm apart for arugula. See the table at the bottom of this post for other distances.) Then I take a small amount of seeds in the palm of my hand, and pick them up one at a time, and try to drop them in the trenches, again spaced out at the recommended distance. (I'm not terribly patient, so the actual spacing is definitely somewhat random. Often I drop more than one at a time just by accident.)
Last, I use the trowel to just slightly cover the seeds in the trenches. With very tiny seeds, you should not cover them deeply: no more than a millimetre or so of soil - just enough to keep some moisture around the seed. (Also this hides the seeds a bit from birds that might come poking around. The seed-eaters - sparrows, etc. - are looking for leftover weed seeds at this time of year.) Since you didn't really fill them in, the little trenches will still be present, and those will also help you to see where to water - which is the next step.
Ideally, you water very, very lightly, from very very low to the ground. If you water heavily onto the soil, you will really pack down the soil on your seeds, and as that dries it will become quite hard, making it harder for the seeds to grow. I put my hand close to the soil over the trench, and pour water from a container into the palm of my hand and let it drip through my fingers as I move along the trench.
Once the plants start to get a few inches tall, you can become gradually less careful - you can just pour water gently on the roots (avoiding dumping it on the plants themselves).
Larger Seeds; Rows and Groups
Larger seeds need to be buried deeper when you plant them. Seed packages will usually recommend a depth. But a simple rule of thumb is to plant seeds at about their own depth or a slightly more: for example, a pea is about 1/4 inch in diameter, so plant it about 1/4 inch under the surface, or slightly more. (In softer, looser soil, you can go slightly deeper, because the seed will be able to push up easily.)
The above section about small seeds assumes you are "area planting" - filling up an area with plants in a grid at the optimal spacing. On the other hand, if you are planting climbers like peas in a row along a fence, then you just make one trench, and then you leave some extra space between that trench and other plants.
The same goes for plants in a group, such as peas planted around a central climbing support (like a teepee of sticks). The peas in that case would be planted in a circular trench, and then you'd leave a little extra room around that circle before planting other things around it.
Spacings for Early Spring Vegetables
- Mizuna
- Arugula
- Mustard Greens
- Chicory
- Chard
- Peas
- Chives
Watch the weather forecast, and try to seize a good day when it comes. Light showers are okay, but heavy rain will usually make the soil too muddy for planting for a day or two afterward. A string of warm, sunny days after you plant helps speed up germination and reduce the chances of the seeds rotting instead of growing.
Temperatures might still be especially cool for planting peas right now. Check the weather forecast, and if you see a few days in a row with temperatures well above 10 celsius, that's the best time to plant. If you plant peas in cold weather (like the forecast for the next week), you will probably have fewer seeds successfully grow into full plants.
If you're not ready to plant yet, don't fret, just go step by step through the previous posts. The next month or so is prime time for planting these. And after that, they will still grow, but some of these will typically finish their life cycle very quickly and not produce as much. (Chard, chicory, and chives are exceptions: they will last all summer, and chives will last for years!)
On the other hand, if you're only planting late-spring things this year, you have to wait. The late spring vegetables (tomatoes, beans, etc.) will all die if you plant them outside now!
If you haven't already bought your supplies, including seeds, obviously you need to do that now.
When it's time to plant, you should also get your drawing of your layout, which you stored somewhere safe after making it a few weeks ago.
One more thing: this is another very detailed post, trying to help out people who are really unsure how to plant things. I am happy to say that after this, the posts will generally get much shorter, since much less detail will be needed. (I like to write, but trying to say everything has been a bit grueling! And I'm sure I've forgotten things, at that. Please let me know in the comments about things you find unclear or confusing.)
Soak peas overnight before you plant them.
If you are growing peas, it's best to soak them in water at room temperature for about 24 hours beforehand. Before they start to grow, they need to soak up a lot of water. That happens only very slowly in the soil if you plant them dry, so it will take longer for them to sprout. The cool soil temperatures also make germination slow. If you forget to soak them the evening before you plant, soaking them for even a few hours before you plant them is better than nothing.
Now, even if you plant them dry, they will eventually sprout, so you could just ignore this advice. On the other hand, if you do soak them, you really need to plant them within about 24 hours, or they will start to sprout before you plant them and the sprouts will be very easily damaged when you handle them to plant them.
Also remember that your peas will be planted about 3 cm apart, in a row, or in a circle around some supporting structure, so try to only soak the amount you will need. Extra seeds can be kept until next year, as long as they stay very dry. Any peas that you soak will have to be planted or thrown away.
Preparing the Soil
Every time you plant in any area, dig in plenty of compost with your trowel, right where you are going plant the seeds. This is the only reason you can plant so intensively: because you are constantly adding rich organic matter back into the soil.
(Note: if you just filled new containers with compost and soil, or just prepared new ground by single- or double-digging in lots of compost, then just this one time, you don't have to dig in any more compost. But next time you plant there, you will have to add compost!)
To prepare to plant, first, spread an inch or so of compost over the area you are going to plant. Then, using your trowel, break up the earth where you are planting and mix it well with the compost. Mix as deep as you can with the trowel. The deeper the loose the soil is, the easier it will be for your plants to form healthy root systems. Try to break up most of the obvious lumps of soil, and generally remove stones that are bigger than 1 cm or so.
If I'm planting stuff that goes close together filling an area, like arugula, then I prepare the whole area all at once (as I described above). If I'm planting stuff that will go in a row, like peas along a fence, I prepare just the narrow row, still mixing in the compost as deep as I can go with the trowel. If I'm planting individual seedlings that I bought in pots, then I prepare just the hole where I'm going to plant the seedling. The idea here is to avoid cultivating too much area that you aren't planting anything in. If you do that, you will encourage weeds to grow. Disturbing the soil causes weed seeds to start growing, and putting in compost there will feed them. So you can be strategic when you prepare for planting, and try to cultivate and compost just where you need to.
Planting Tiny Seeds
Mizuna, arugula, and mustard greens all have extremely tiny seeds. Traditionally they are scattered ("broadcast"), but this makes them grow irregularly and too close to each other, so they have to be thinned later, which is quite laborious. It's also a waste of seed. And if you don't get around to thinning them, they will compete with each other and stay small and spindly. Furthermore, it's harder to weed them when they are irregularly spaced: for one thing, you can't see as clearly which ones are the weeds and which are the vegetable plants. That's even harder if you are planting something for the first time and you don't even know what its seedlings will look like!
So though it's tricky to plant them one at a time at a regular, optimal spacing, it is actually easier in the long run.
When planting very tiny small seeds, after the compost is dug in, I use the trowel to try to level out the soil a bit. Then I make shallow, narrow trenches in the soil - maybe about 1 or 2 cm deep. I make these parallel so the bottoms of the trenches are the recommended distance apart for the plants. (Say, 5 cm apart for arugula. See the table at the bottom of this post for other distances.) Then I take a small amount of seeds in the palm of my hand, and pick them up one at a time, and try to drop them in the trenches, again spaced out at the recommended distance. (I'm not terribly patient, so the actual spacing is definitely somewhat random. Often I drop more than one at a time just by accident.)
Last, I use the trowel to just slightly cover the seeds in the trenches. With very tiny seeds, you should not cover them deeply: no more than a millimetre or so of soil - just enough to keep some moisture around the seed. (Also this hides the seeds a bit from birds that might come poking around. The seed-eaters - sparrows, etc. - are looking for leftover weed seeds at this time of year.) Since you didn't really fill them in, the little trenches will still be present, and those will also help you to see where to water - which is the next step.
Ideally, you water very, very lightly, from very very low to the ground. If you water heavily onto the soil, you will really pack down the soil on your seeds, and as that dries it will become quite hard, making it harder for the seeds to grow. I put my hand close to the soil over the trench, and pour water from a container into the palm of my hand and let it drip through my fingers as I move along the trench.
Once the plants start to get a few inches tall, you can become gradually less careful - you can just pour water gently on the roots (avoiding dumping it on the plants themselves).
Larger Seeds; Rows and Groups
Larger seeds need to be buried deeper when you plant them. Seed packages will usually recommend a depth. But a simple rule of thumb is to plant seeds at about their own depth or a slightly more: for example, a pea is about 1/4 inch in diameter, so plant it about 1/4 inch under the surface, or slightly more. (In softer, looser soil, you can go slightly deeper, because the seed will be able to push up easily.)
The above section about small seeds assumes you are "area planting" - filling up an area with plants in a grid at the optimal spacing. On the other hand, if you are planting climbers like peas in a row along a fence, then you just make one trench, and then you leave some extra space between that trench and other plants.
The same goes for plants in a group, such as peas planted around a central climbing support (like a teepee of sticks). The peas in that case would be planted in a circular trench, and then you'd leave a little extra room around that circle before planting other things around it.
Spacings for Early Spring Vegetables
| Height | Planting Time | Spacing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peas | climber | early spring | close row or group (3cm) |
| Mustard Greens | tall (1m) | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Mizuna | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Arugula | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Chicory | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Chard | low | early spring | med (8cm) |
| Chives | low | early spring | close group (1cm) |
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Preparing Your Plot
(This post assumes you've worked through the previous posts first: Choosing Your Plot, Choosing Your Vegetables and Things You Need.)
If you are planting early spring vegetables, it's definitely time to get your plot ready. Peas and greens like arugula need to be planted soon to mature in the cool weather they prefer. See the Choosing Your Vegetables post if you are unsure which vegetables are early spring ones. If you're only planting warm weather vegetables in late spring, you still have a month or two to get your plot ready. Otherwise...
Get your gloves on, grab your trowel and your other supplies (compost, containers, potting soil, etc.).
Do this work in the area you are actually going to grow in, because big containers will be quite heavy once you water them. But you can fill the containers in a different spot as long as you move them into their final position before you water them.
To make clean-up easier, spread out quite a bit of newspaper around where you are going to fill your containers. For me, at least, potting soil always seems to spread out everywhere, no matter how hard I try not to spill it.
You are done when you have a pretty clear patch (or patches) of soil to plant in.
If you are planting early spring vegetables, it's definitely time to get your plot ready. Peas and greens like arugula need to be planted soon to mature in the cool weather they prefer. See the Choosing Your Vegetables post if you are unsure which vegetables are early spring ones. If you're only planting warm weather vegetables in late spring, you still have a month or two to get your plot ready. Otherwise...
Get your gloves on, grab your trowel and your other supplies (compost, containers, potting soil, etc.).
Preparing Pots and Containers
Do this work in the area you are actually going to grow in, because big containers will be quite heavy once you water them. But you can fill the containers in a different spot as long as you move them into their final position before you water them.
To make clean-up easier, spread out quite a bit of newspaper around where you are going to fill your containers. For me, at least, potting soil always seems to spread out everywhere, no matter how hard I try not to spill it.
This is your last chance to make sure all the containers have ample drainage holes! Punch holes in the bottom if they don't already have them. I mentioned this before, but I should emphasize again that it's essential to prevent your plants from dying of root rot. Even if they're not exposed to rain, you could very easily water too much without realizing it. And, as I also mentioned before, if the containers are in an area where you don't want leakage on the floor, then you need to have something under them to catch it.
Fill each container about 7/8 full of potting soil, and about 1/8 full of compost. (Okay, that's a very rough proportion - I really have no idea how much compost my plants get!) Fill the container very full, because this soil mix will quickly compress down a lot as it gets watered, and also as the organic material in the soil decomposes to feed your plants.
Mix the soil and compost thoroughly together. Move the containers into their final position, with no newspaper underneath. (You won't be able to get the newspaper out from under large containers once they get heavy.)
Mix the soil and compost thoroughly together. Move the containers into their final position, with no newspaper underneath. (You won't be able to get the newspaper out from under large containers once they get heavy.)
This is not planting day, but you should water the containers now anyway. Potting soil behaves strangely until it's been wet for a while - it tends to be too "fluffy" to plant in. So by wetting it now, you will make it easier to work with when planting. Water until you think the soil is damp all the way down, but avoid making the soil sopping wet.
Using an Existing Garden Patch
If you are going to plant in ornamental landscaping that's already got stuff growing in it, or if you are going to plant somewhere that's
been cultivated before, you just have to clean up your vegetable growing
area now.
If this is going to be a dedicated garden patch (rather than planting among other existing plants), it might be a good idea to consider your approach. Dig into the soil a bit with the trowel.
The soil should be pretty lose and easy to dig, not hard packed or densely full of roots from grass or trees. Some weeds are not a problem at all. Earthworms are a good sign: they both improve the soil and prefer to live in healthy soil. If the patch is very wet and muddy right now, that makes it a little hard to tell. Good soil will stick to your shovel a lot if it's very wet, but when it's only moist, it will crumble easily. On the other hand, if it's very sandy or gravelly, that's not great either.
If any of this puts you in doubt, you can consider if you want to do the hard work of shallow or deep preparation described below under "Creating a New Plot". That's a lot more work, but compacted, clayey soil, or sandy, gravelly soil, are not so great for vegetables - the plants will not be able to create as strong root systems and the soil will not hold moisture as evenly, so the plants will experience more severe wet/dry fluctuations, and the soil will probably also be effectively less nutritious because soil organisms will not be thriving either.
If you've planned to remove some existing ornamental plants, remove them now to make room for your vegetables. You can transplant them somewhere else if they're nice and you want to keep them. In that case, try to dig out a large enough root ball of soil so that you don't damage the roots too much. Then just dig a new hole, and try to get the plants in at the same level they were before, or just slightly lower (so that rainwater will tend to flow in towards the roots).
Remove old dead growth left over from last year, if it's in the way, and dig up any perennial weeds that are growing. Try to get the roots of the weeds out. Any roots or pieces of roots that look firm and healthy will start to grow into new weeds soon. If there are dandelions with new leaves, you can eat the greens in a sandwich or salad - as long as you know they are dandelions. (Please don't poison yourself.) Some other weeds are tasty too, but that's beyond the scope of this blog. (Foraging is another topic - though a great one. I do eat my edible weeds.)
Or if it's an area with some kind of "mulch", e.g. something covering the soil like wood chips or plastic, you need to remove that from the area you are going to plant in.
If this is going to be a dedicated garden patch (rather than planting among other existing plants), it might be a good idea to consider your approach. Dig into the soil a bit with the trowel.
The soil should be pretty lose and easy to dig, not hard packed or densely full of roots from grass or trees. Some weeds are not a problem at all. Earthworms are a good sign: they both improve the soil and prefer to live in healthy soil. If the patch is very wet and muddy right now, that makes it a little hard to tell. Good soil will stick to your shovel a lot if it's very wet, but when it's only moist, it will crumble easily. On the other hand, if it's very sandy or gravelly, that's not great either.
If any of this puts you in doubt, you can consider if you want to do the hard work of shallow or deep preparation described below under "Creating a New Plot". That's a lot more work, but compacted, clayey soil, or sandy, gravelly soil, are not so great for vegetables - the plants will not be able to create as strong root systems and the soil will not hold moisture as evenly, so the plants will experience more severe wet/dry fluctuations, and the soil will probably also be effectively less nutritious because soil organisms will not be thriving either.
If you've planned to remove some existing ornamental plants, remove them now to make room for your vegetables. You can transplant them somewhere else if they're nice and you want to keep them. In that case, try to dig out a large enough root ball of soil so that you don't damage the roots too much. Then just dig a new hole, and try to get the plants in at the same level they were before, or just slightly lower (so that rainwater will tend to flow in towards the roots).
Remove old dead growth left over from last year, if it's in the way, and dig up any perennial weeds that are growing. Try to get the roots of the weeds out. Any roots or pieces of roots that look firm and healthy will start to grow into new weeds soon. If there are dandelions with new leaves, you can eat the greens in a sandwich or salad - as long as you know they are dandelions. (Please don't poison yourself.) Some other weeds are tasty too, but that's beyond the scope of this blog. (Foraging is another topic - though a great one. I do eat my edible weeds.)
Or if it's an area with some kind of "mulch", e.g. something covering the soil like wood chips or plastic, you need to remove that from the area you are going to plant in.
You are done when you have a pretty clear patch (or patches) of soil to plant in.
Creating a New Plot
If you are planting in a patch of lawn, or somewhere else that has not been cultivated before, now you have the hardest work to do: the shovel work.
To prepare new ground, you want to loosen the soil and mix in compost as deeply as possible, which means as deeply as you have the energy for. If you've kept yourself to a small patch, that will be a big help now.
One note: you should make sure your soil is ready for this work. There is a standard planting phrase "as soon as the soil can be worked". When the snow has just come off, the soil will still be partly frozen. After that, it will be very "waterlogged" for a while. Just after heavy rain is no good either. When the soil is very wet, it's almost impossible to dig and prepare, because it just forms huge, heavy, muddy lumps on the shovel. You will suffer unnecessarily if you try to garden then!
The soil is only ready to "work" when it has drained enough so that doesn't happen very much. (But your soil might still be pretty heavy and sticky if it's very compacted, high in clay, and doesn't have much organic matter in it. That's why we need to "prepare" it.) So before you get going, check with your trowel, and see if the soil is still in a very wet, muddy mass. If lumps tend to crumble at least a bit when you squish the lumps with the trowel, then the soil "can be worked", and you can begin. If it's still too wet, you have to wait a few days, and try again.
In preparing the soil, what we are going for is loose, aerated soil full of organic matter that keeps it from clumping up again. That will be the kind of soil that is makes it easy for plants to grow roots, holds lots of water without getting waterlogged, is immediately nutritious for plants, and also supports lots of soil organisms that are the real long-term source of released nutrients for your plants. Also, well-prepared soil is ready earlier in the following years, because the higher amounts of organic matter make it behave better when wet.
Once you've prepared a bed, try never to walk on it again. That will keep it uncompacted. Make sure your bed is small enough to reach in comfortably from the sides - no more than 2 feet away from a path in any direction (so maximum 4 feet between paths), and less is better. (Less sore back is better, to be precise.) If your planting area is too large for this, then add more paths to cut it into smaller, more reachable pieces.
If you never walk on the prepared soil, and you always add more compost each time you plant, you will not need to do this heavy work again. Earthworms and the roots of plants will together keep your soil deeply aerated and uncompacted.
Shallow Preparation:
I'll talk about the easier, shallower way first. This way is less work, but shallower, so the result will be less supportive of more deep-rooted vegetables like tomatoes, chard, and beans.
If you are removing existing lawn, you probably should do deep preparation. And generally, I'd say do deep preparation if you are physically capable of doing it. It's a one-time thing, after all.
Remove any weeds from the surface. Now start digging up the soil and stirring it around as deep as your shovel blade goes, looking for masses of living roots you find. Remove those and put them aside. They are strong healthy future weeds you most likely don't want.
Once your patch is very stirred up, spread lots of compost on top - ideally you will have enough compost to form a layer on the surface that is a few inches deep. Now continue stirring up the soil with your shovel, mixing it very well with the compost and breaking up all the remaining lumps of packed soil.
The deeper you stir it up, the better.
Deep Preparation:
The deep way to prepare the soil is called "double digging". It goes two shovel-lengths deep (instead of one shovel deep, like the shallow preparation described above). Lots of vegetables (tomatoes, beans, chard, etc.) prefer to root deeper than one shovel depth, so this is definitely worth the effort if you can manage it.
But the basic idea is still just that you want to mix in compost and loosen the soil as far down as you can go.
If you are digging in a grassy area, see the section below about dealing with grass.
If your plot is very small (say 1 metre by 1 metre), you may just want to remove the whole top "1 shovel deep" layer of soil, piling it all to the side. Then prepare the entire bottom layer all at once, mixing in compost and breaking up lumps as deep as you can go with the shovel. Try to leave it loose and fine. Then put the entire top layer back, and mix compost into that as deep as you can go with the shovel, again breaking up all the lumps and leaving it loose and fine.
For somewhat larger areas, double digging is a clever approach designed to work the soil down to two shovel-depths deep, while minimizing how much you actually have to move the soil around. This is done by proceeding in strips, so you don't have to remove the entire top layer of soil at once.
First you remove soil from a trench that is one full shovel depth deep. (It's helpful to have a plastic sheet to put this soil on, or a wheelbarrow, or some kind of bin, just to reduce the mess and make it easier to recover this soil at the end of the process.) Then you work the bottom of the trench, the deep layer. Mix compost into the soil at the bottom of the trench with your shovel, mixing it and losening it well, going as deep as you can - another full shovel depth. Ideally, you have enough compost to mix in a layer that's a few inches deep.
Next you start a new trench beside the original one, moving the top layer of soil from that trench over to fill in the first trench. Then you add more compost to this top layer of soil in the first trench and loosen it well.
The first trench is done, and now you are standing in the second trench. Now you work compost deep into the bottom of the second trench. Then you dig a third trench, using soil from the third trench to fill in the top layer of the second trench. You mix that with compost, and so on.
You fill in the last trench with the soil you set aside from the first one.
Need help visualizing that? The wikipedia entry on double digging includes an animated illustration that makes this quite clear. However, they show mixing the top layers at the end, which would require walking on the prepared soil - which you should not do. I suggest mixing each top layer while you are standing in the next (unprepared) trench.
The advantage of this whole trench-by-trench double-dig approach is simply that most of the soil that is moved is just moved a little ways - from a new trench to the previous trench beside it, instead of, say, putting the whole top layer aside at once. The objective is still just to loosen the soil and add compost as far down as possible.
To prepare new ground, you want to loosen the soil and mix in compost as deeply as possible, which means as deeply as you have the energy for. If you've kept yourself to a small patch, that will be a big help now.
One note: you should make sure your soil is ready for this work. There is a standard planting phrase "as soon as the soil can be worked". When the snow has just come off, the soil will still be partly frozen. After that, it will be very "waterlogged" for a while. Just after heavy rain is no good either. When the soil is very wet, it's almost impossible to dig and prepare, because it just forms huge, heavy, muddy lumps on the shovel. You will suffer unnecessarily if you try to garden then!
The soil is only ready to "work" when it has drained enough so that doesn't happen very much. (But your soil might still be pretty heavy and sticky if it's very compacted, high in clay, and doesn't have much organic matter in it. That's why we need to "prepare" it.) So before you get going, check with your trowel, and see if the soil is still in a very wet, muddy mass. If lumps tend to crumble at least a bit when you squish the lumps with the trowel, then the soil "can be worked", and you can begin. If it's still too wet, you have to wait a few days, and try again.
In preparing the soil, what we are going for is loose, aerated soil full of organic matter that keeps it from clumping up again. That will be the kind of soil that is makes it easy for plants to grow roots, holds lots of water without getting waterlogged, is immediately nutritious for plants, and also supports lots of soil organisms that are the real long-term source of released nutrients for your plants. Also, well-prepared soil is ready earlier in the following years, because the higher amounts of organic matter make it behave better when wet.
Once you've prepared a bed, try never to walk on it again. That will keep it uncompacted. Make sure your bed is small enough to reach in comfortably from the sides - no more than 2 feet away from a path in any direction (so maximum 4 feet between paths), and less is better. (Less sore back is better, to be precise.) If your planting area is too large for this, then add more paths to cut it into smaller, more reachable pieces.
If you never walk on the prepared soil, and you always add more compost each time you plant, you will not need to do this heavy work again. Earthworms and the roots of plants will together keep your soil deeply aerated and uncompacted.
Shallow Preparation:
I'll talk about the easier, shallower way first. This way is less work, but shallower, so the result will be less supportive of more deep-rooted vegetables like tomatoes, chard, and beans.
If you are removing existing lawn, you probably should do deep preparation. And generally, I'd say do deep preparation if you are physically capable of doing it. It's a one-time thing, after all.
Remove any weeds from the surface. Now start digging up the soil and stirring it around as deep as your shovel blade goes, looking for masses of living roots you find. Remove those and put them aside. They are strong healthy future weeds you most likely don't want.
Once your patch is very stirred up, spread lots of compost on top - ideally you will have enough compost to form a layer on the surface that is a few inches deep. Now continue stirring up the soil with your shovel, mixing it very well with the compost and breaking up all the remaining lumps of packed soil.
The deeper you stir it up, the better.
Deep Preparation:
The deep way to prepare the soil is called "double digging". It goes two shovel-lengths deep (instead of one shovel deep, like the shallow preparation described above). Lots of vegetables (tomatoes, beans, chard, etc.) prefer to root deeper than one shovel depth, so this is definitely worth the effort if you can manage it.
But the basic idea is still just that you want to mix in compost and loosen the soil as far down as you can go.
If you are digging in a grassy area, see the section below about dealing with grass.
If your plot is very small (say 1 metre by 1 metre), you may just want to remove the whole top "1 shovel deep" layer of soil, piling it all to the side. Then prepare the entire bottom layer all at once, mixing in compost and breaking up lumps as deep as you can go with the shovel. Try to leave it loose and fine. Then put the entire top layer back, and mix compost into that as deep as you can go with the shovel, again breaking up all the lumps and leaving it loose and fine.
For somewhat larger areas, double digging is a clever approach designed to work the soil down to two shovel-depths deep, while minimizing how much you actually have to move the soil around. This is done by proceeding in strips, so you don't have to remove the entire top layer of soil at once.
First you remove soil from a trench that is one full shovel depth deep. (It's helpful to have a plastic sheet to put this soil on, or a wheelbarrow, or some kind of bin, just to reduce the mess and make it easier to recover this soil at the end of the process.) Then you work the bottom of the trench, the deep layer. Mix compost into the soil at the bottom of the trench with your shovel, mixing it and losening it well, going as deep as you can - another full shovel depth. Ideally, you have enough compost to mix in a layer that's a few inches deep.
Next you start a new trench beside the original one, moving the top layer of soil from that trench over to fill in the first trench. Then you add more compost to this top layer of soil in the first trench and loosen it well.
The first trench is done, and now you are standing in the second trench. Now you work compost deep into the bottom of the second trench. Then you dig a third trench, using soil from the third trench to fill in the top layer of the second trench. You mix that with compost, and so on.
You fill in the last trench with the soil you set aside from the first one.
Need help visualizing that? The wikipedia entry on double digging includes an animated illustration that makes this quite clear. However, they show mixing the top layers at the end, which would require walking on the prepared soil - which you should not do. I suggest mixing each top layer while you are standing in the next (unprepared) trench.
The advantage of this whole trench-by-trench double-dig approach is simply that most of the soil that is moved is just moved a little ways - from a new trench to the previous trench beside it, instead of, say, putting the whole top layer aside at once. The objective is still just to loosen the soil and add compost as far down as possible.
Dealing with Grass
If you are digging where there's solid grass, you should probably double dig. And as you go, you need to do one extra (hard) thing: from each trench, cut away the turf, the layer of grass including its whole root layer, with the shovel and set it aside.
After you prepare the bottom layer of each trench (after it's all mixed with compost and loosened), put the turf from that trench back in, grass-side down (i.e. upside down), before the rest of the topsoil from the next trench goes on top. That puts the grass in deep, where it won't be able to grow anymore, and where it will decompose and further enrich your soil.
(Now that you're reading this, you may want to contemplate "keep it small" for a while. Did you keep it small enough? If not, this is a good time to adjust your plans!)
If you are digging where there's solid grass, you should probably double dig. And as you go, you need to do one extra (hard) thing: from each trench, cut away the turf, the layer of grass including its whole root layer, with the shovel and set it aside.
After you prepare the bottom layer of each trench (after it's all mixed with compost and loosened), put the turf from that trench back in, grass-side down (i.e. upside down), before the rest of the topsoil from the next trench goes on top. That puts the grass in deep, where it won't be able to grow anymore, and where it will decompose and further enrich your soil.
(Now that you're reading this, you may want to contemplate "keep it small" for a while. Did you keep it small enough? If not, this is a good time to adjust your plans!)
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