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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