Prepping Your Garden for Planting

Preparing Your Soil

Good gardens start with good soil, so the most important garden task is to prepare your soil properly before planting. It is not the most exciting or glamorous part of gardening but it is the most important and will pay dividends throughout the season.

There is a "trick" to know when to start preparing your soil. A date on the calendar is not a good indicator, as all soils are different from garden to garden. A tried and true test to see if your soil if ready to be worked is to grab and handful of soil from your garden and form it into a ball in your hand. Touch the ball with your finger. I f it breaks apart into loose pieces, your ready to dig in. If the ball does not break apart, that indicates the soil is too wet to work. Resist the temptation to dig or rototill. Doing so results in soil that becomes compacted, poorly drained and with few air spaces. All of which spell disaster for a growing plant. Soils that are worked when too wet often remain difficult to deal with all season.

Another thing to consider is the addition of soil amendments. One of the best soil amendments is compost or well rotted manure. Adding a 3-4 inch layer and working it into the soil at the time of soil preparation will improve your soil greatly and pay "gardening dividends". This should be a task tackled in both the spring and fall and will result in your garden soil getting better each year.

Adding Nutrients

If you are new to gardening or starting a new garden plot in your backyard and aren't sure if your garden needs any added nutrients you can test your soil using a Soil Test Kit. Using a soil test kit is useful tool for home gardeners as the test result will include a recommendation from the lab on how to improve your soils nutrient levels. For established gardens, maintaining basic levels of nutrients in the soil can be accomplished by adding an all purpose garden fertilizer or organic fertilizer at the time of soil preparation. Formulations such at 10-10-10, 5-10-5, 10-6-4 or similar applied at the rate of 1 pound per 100 sq. ft. of garden area is sufficient to get you off to a good start. A follow-up application midway through the garden season will ensure the plants continue to grow and produce.