Vegetable Garden Planting: How to Make Better Garden Soil

As your vegetable garden planting project continues, you are now ready to make your garden soil as rich and fertile as possible for your home grown vegetables.

Let’s recap. You’ve now chosen the location of your very first garden and the spot you’ve settled on has an easterly aspect and thus will get plenty of morning sun. It is well protected from strong winds either
naturally or you have provided a wind break. Large trees are located a safe distance away because you don’t want their roots to compete with your vegetable plants for food and water.

Now, let’s look at how to prepare your garden soil correctly and to get it ready for planting. This is a crucial step in the whole process. Suburban backyards are very rarely suitable for growing healthy vegetables because they just don’t contain the nutrients necessary for those plants to survive. Therefore, it’s up to you to prepare the soil and add the nutrients about 4-5 weeks before you plant.

Prepare the Spot Carefully

A good size vegetable garden for a beginner is an area of 3m x 1.5m. So, measure such an area and clear it of the top growth and a thin layer of turf, if you have to. Then, start weeding thoroughly. Some gardeners stop after weeding for the first time and then return a few days later to remove any weeds that have sprouted again. That’s a great tip. Once you’ve finished weeding, cultivate the soil to a depth of about 30cm or about the depth of the garden fork or spade but don’t turn it over. Remember the good soil is underneath and that’s where it should remain.

Use a Soil Testing Kit – No Need to Guess

Check the acid or alkaline level of your soil. It’s very easy to do. Use a soil testing kit to find out. If it’s sour (acidic), add garden lime according to directions. That should be in the vicinity of 1-2 cups (250-500gms) per square meter. Water it in and check the soil level again in about a week.

Crop Rotation for Best Results

The next stage is to divide your garden into 4 or more smaller beds. This will allow you to plant different varieties of vegetables into each bed : carrots in one bed, potatoes in another and so on. The huge advantage this gives you is, as you finish harvesting one set of crops from a bed, you can then plant a different kind of crop into that bed. In other words, you never grow the same vegetable in the same bed.
This is called crop rotation and it is a widely used practice not only to control disease and pests but also to increase soil fertility.

Apply Organic Fertilizer

It’s now time for you to spread a thick layer (10cm) of well-rotted animal manure or organic compost to the garden. Add blood and bone (a handful per square meter) and dig it all in. Rake level and water in. Then, leave it alone for a few days to settle. Your seedlings will appreciate it.

Finally, your garden is ready. What you should now have is a good garden soil, filled with rich nutrients and which drains easily.

You can now:

1. Sow any vegetable seeds you like directly into your garden.

2. Transplant the seedlings that you grew indoors into your garden.

3. Buy seedlings elsewhere and transplant them into your garden.

One final point. With a garden of this size, you may not have too much trouble reaching your plants to water or weed them. However, if you can’t for one reason or another, allow for that by taking a long term
view and creating a permanent garden layout. This is where the vegetable beds remain in place season after season and are kept separate from walking paths. This is a much better option. It will minimize soil compaction from foot traffic and will make your garden easy to maintain.

You’ll admit that it was not very hard to complete this vital stage of your vegetable garden planting project i.e to get the garden soil ready for planting. The important thing is that it will not be long before you start enjoying your own tasty and organically grown vegetables. How satisfying will that be!.