How to Prepare Your Garden For Spring Planting

You will learn how to prepare your garden beds and plots for spring planting, including soil preparation, mulching, and tool maintenance.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Farmer's Almanac
• Black Garbage Bags
• Simple Soil Test Kit
• Garden Shears
• Mulch

1. Prior to planting anything in the garden, learn what your last frost date is by contacting your county’s agricultural extension office. By knowing this date, you can make a tentative time-line for the completion of early spring garden preparations.

2. Weeding perennial weeds such as chickweed and chicory is often one of the first chores in the garden. A helpful aide when weeding is to keep the soil slightly moist. This will allow roots to be pulled in one piece and with greater ease versus attempting to wrestle them out of hard, packed soil. To lessen the number of times this chore is repeated in a season (and the amount of time taken away from more enjoyable gardening activities), some gardeners choose to lay black plastic or weed control fabric down prior to planting. This method effectively prevents sunlight and sufficient oxygen from reaching immature weeds, thus choking them out.

3. After weeding your garden bed(s), test the soil or send a sample to a lab suggested by your county’s extension office. Learning the pH and mineral composition of your soil is a major element in a thriving garden. The pH of soil is a measure of acidity or alkalinity ranging between 0 and 14, where 7 is neutral, 0 is highly acidic, and 14 is highly alkaline.

4. Sharpen all hand pruners, saws, shears, and lawn mower blades.

5. Take an inventory of the tomato cages and other plant supports that made it through last season. Early spring is often the best time to stock up on these items due to the fact that stores will have more varieties of greater quality in stock. Supporting the heavy heads of flowers such as peonies promotes a healthier plant and keeping vegetable plants vertical reduces the chance of certain insects from reaching the developing fruit.

Tips & Warnings

• Mulching is another preferred method of non-chemical weed control. By adding around 2” of mulch, not only are weeds choked out, but moisture is kept in. Mulch helps soil retain water and stay cool in even the sunniest of locations.
• Depending on your plant material, you may have to either increase or decrease pH and mineral levels to satisfy their needs. The most common amendments added to soil to meet pH and nutrient needs are lime (to reduce acidity), phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium. Other materials such as peat, manure, and vermiculite are also added to improve organic composition and drainage.
• Keeping a sharp pruner and saw ensures not only a good, clean cut for your plants, but also protects your personal safety as well. Most hand pruners have blades that can be sharpened at home using a whet stone. If you are uncomfortable with doing this, though, replacement blades are often inexpensive and worth the investment.
• Mulch reduces soil temperature, so be sure to apply it only when the soil has reached a steady temperature greater than 50F. Applying it too early will only lengthen the amount of time you have to wait before safely planting.

[maryanne09]

on 5/29/2009 Great article on How to Prepare Your Garden For Spring Planting! 5*'s Recommend :o)

[ShirleyLee]

on 5/4/2009 Good article on garden prep. Many new gardeners need these tips - I can tell because my most popular garden articles are general tips like "How to Apply Mulch to Landscape Beds, Shrubs, and Trees" and "How to Prepare a Garden Bed without Chemicals or Tilling."

[MSmith]

on 4/14/2009 Thanks for a great article on preparing gardens for spring planting. 5*

[FrazzledNanny]

on 4/14/2009 Thanks for the great article. We will be preparing our garden soon for Spring planting. 5*