Preparing Backyard Garden Beds: Spring

For those of you who are just staring out on your new back yard garden and need step by step instructions

1. How to build a raised bed
2. Building good soil : fertilizer and texture
3. Installing Drip Irrigation and plasticulture (mulch)
4. Keeping deer and other pest out of your Garden
   Please see my blog post for March 2011 here 

Spring is here, it was 72 degrees yesterday and i got my first garden sun burn! It is time to begin preparing beds for this years garden season. Since I already have made my raised beds and built good soil with organic matter and top soil, all I need to do their years is maybe add a little more garden compost (bought or homemade:see Composting). I still have half a bag of 10-10-10 in storage so these are three steps to RE-preparing my plasticluture and drip irrigation raised beds.

1. Clean Up: clean out your old plans
   Most of my plants were chopped down in the fall of last year to prevent pest from finding them, now that the root systems are rotting and the soil is moist, I just ripped up the old plant root and stalks that remained. Because I use a basic grid square foot gardening layout, I need to make room for the new plants. Most of these plants and roots can be placed in the compost pile (not weeds). (for perennial herbs trim and cut back beds and for strawberries dig up mother plant and train runners)
2. Roll back plastic mulch

   

   raised beds after rolling back plastic

   One thing I love about plasticulture is that I can simply roll it back when needed. The straw I use on top can be removes easily (unlike pine bark) or simply refreshed with new straw. Although straw does insulate my bed when placed on top of plastic I simply use it because it make my garden LOOK pretty and is very cheap!
3. Pull out and replace drip lines if necessary- This is the one time a year you have access to your whole dip lines, so replace them if needed. You can replace them every year, but I only replaced the ones I had accidentally cut a hole in!
4. Break up your soil and add organic (natural- not 'organic') composted matter and fertilize.
   With my drip lines removed, I can spade my soil to my hearts content. My soil texture still looks great (8-10 inches of non clumpy semi black dirt!) so all I needed to do was add about 2-3 pounds of granular 10-10-10 fertilizer. Organic fertilizer is more expensive and this is one area I don't understand the benefit of 'going organic'. I can buy a enough fertilizer for my 800 square foot garden for $7.00. OR I could shovel in 150 pounds of pounds of blood meal and horse manure. If you have it use it- but all i have around here is baby and dog poop! Synthetic fertilizer is simply man putting natural minerals together in granular form. I'll take it!
5. Re-bury drip line- Now that my soil is ready for the new year. I can rebury my drip lines.
6. Cover back up with plastic mulch- You can use all new plastic much each year (it certainly is cheap enough) or you can reuse last years. Some beds (like corn) I left alone because I had very few holes in plastic, others I had to replace. The more holes you have in you plastic the more moisture escape AND the more weeds you will have.
   Your beds are ready to plant!
   * make sure you fertilize and treat soil for individual plant needs some plant needs more fertilizer or a higher PH. Like blueberries or tomatoes. http://www.caes.uga.edu/applications/publications/files/html/B1011/B1011tables.pdf