Garden preparation is one of the most important aspects to gardening. If you prepare well your plants will flourish. As the saying goes “If you fail to prepare you prepare to fail”.
The soil needs to be prepared well before you start to plant any plants in it. Plants will thrive in well conditioned soil and even the toughest soil can be prepared for planting.
Your soil needs to be rich in nutrients and well drained. You need to plan your planting according to what conditions your plants like.
If you plan to have a lawn in your garden you should also plan and prepare for this too. Again soil quality is key, any home can have a perfect lawn but you must make sure that you begin by preparing the soil before planting
If you follow a few simple rules and prepare well your garden will be a triumph.
Select a location for the first step in making your garden. If you have limited choices for a location, do the best you can with what you have. If there is limited space, you may end up having no garden or a box garden, which is still better than no garden at all.
Right now speaking hypothetically, we will go on the idea that there is plenty of space and all we need to do is choose the location. Use the sun as the determining factor for the location of the garden. A north corner should actually act as a total last resort, since they are an excellent area for certain wild flowers, begonias, and fern, but are of little use for a general garden.
The ideal spot for a garden is one that has southern exposure. There the plants will have access to the sun all day long. The row of vegetables and flowers should go from north and south and will allow the plants to receive sunlight all morning on the eastern side. In the afternoon sunrays will come in on the western side and with the sunlight coming in on all sides, there should be no lopsided plants. In the case the gardens were to face southeast, it would work best to distribute rows running from northwest to southwest.
The main idea is to get sunlight to evenly distribute throughout the garden for the longest time possible. Window plants affected by the uneven sunlight, which is easy to recognize by the way they tend to grow towards the sunlight making them lopsided. A garden with southern exposure is ideal, since all plants are given exposure to the sun on each side at least half of the time throughout the day.
Diagrams do help in the planning of your garden, but will not accomplish the same exposure within the southern regardless of how meticulous you plan. Remember northern exposure cuts-off the sun almost completely from the plants and the northeastern and southeastern both cannot achieve the same distribution of sunlight as the southern point, no matter how much time you put into planning. Planning on paper will act as a great help when planting time comes around and will help to save time and money overall.
Sometimes garden spots you find may have a covering of rubbish or turf. In an area that is large for your gardening, you can plough the area and the sod is turned under, whereas smaller areas you would want to remove the sod. In order to remove the sod, you will have to stake off and line the area of your garden. The purpose of the line is to give you an accurate and straight course to follow. Use a spade to the cut the edges along the line and if the area is smaller the better. A smaller area, around 4 x 18 you can mark off like a checkerboard and remove the sod in two long strips cut lengthwise with the spade. After cutting through the turf roll it up like a carpet.
With a larger garden, divide it into strips a foot wide and take off the sod as stated before. Do not throw away the sod, since it is rich and not easily available, but pack it side down one square onto another. Over time, it will rot and will make for a great fertilizer or compost, which you can build onto with other vegetable matter over the summer and then add leaves in the fall through autumn and it will be ready for next year. Even with a garden that is large, it’s a good idea to take the larger pieces of sod out for compost, rather than have it turned under.
The ground has to have soil fine enough for planting and this cannot be achieved simply by spading which causes big lumps to break up and leaves no room for tiny root hairs to penetrate. In this case, a rake is better to use to achieve optimum growing conditions for seedlings. The rake has the ability to break up large lumps and whatever cannot be done with the rake, the hoe can do quite nicely.
The hoe seems hard for many to handle. The main idea of the hoe is to rid the soil of weeds and stir up the surface. Spading needs a lot of work behind it as the use of the hoe does not. The rake works wonderfully in the completion of your work, after all lumps are broken in smoothing everything out.
