Spring Gardening

Prepare your garden area for spring planting.

Tuesday-october, 21, 2008

If you do not have a roto-tiller and you are going to employ the no-till method in your vegetable garden, now is the time to lay down your landscape fabric(if you don't know what this is please refer to the page titled "no roto-tiller"). Fall is the perfect time of year to apply lime and incorporate organic matter into the soil. We like to rake the leaves from the yard(We have a bunch of them) into the garden area. We then spread about a 3 or 4 inch layer of leaves on the garden and roto-till them in. Next it is time to apply lime to the entire garden area according to the directions on the bag. Some people prefer to have the pH of their soil tested before they decide on how much lime to apply. This is a good idea, and if you would like to test your soil pH you can purchase an inexpensive test kit at your local garden center or from your online garden supply house. We pretty much know what kind of organic matter has been incorporated into our garden because we put it there, and we also know that our soil was very acidic to begin with. With these things in mind we will apply the recommended amount of lime(specified on the back of the package). We will rake the rest of our leaves to the back of the yard where they will remain until next spring when we will roto-till another 3 or 4 inches of them into the garden. We do have a compost pile that we use to amend the soil in the individual holes we place our plants in during spring planting. It would be nice if we had enough to cover the entire garden but unfortunately this is not the case.

cover crops

This is also the time of year when you may want to consider planting a "cover crop". Field peas, clover, and rye are good choices. If you decide to use rye grass as a cover crop be sure you sow "annual rye grass". Simply broadcast seed over your freshly tilled garden and lightly rake it in. When you roto-till this crop back into the soil in the spring, you will see a marked improvement in the texture of your soil. If you decide not to plant a cover crop you may want to consider covering your garden area with a 3 or 4 inch layer of mulch(straw, leaves, ect.) and leaving the garden covered for the winter months. This is an easy way to really improve the texture of your soil come spring time.

Where to next?

1. Ask a question or leave a comment.
2. Go to the garden home page.
3. What to do if I am an apartment dweller?
4. What can I do this winter to help with my spring planting?(you are here)
5. I have a small garden spot, but I have no roto-tiller.
6. The last time I planted a garden I was disappointed with the results.
7. Go to Project365V.
8. Go to sitemap.
9. Visit the garden diary.