Garden Bed Preparation
What are the key steps to garden bed preparation?
With garden bed preparation, first you'd want to test the soil. You'd want to eliminate weeds. You'd want to mend the soil with organic matter, that's really the key, and preferably a nutrient providing organic matter. And often at this time too is when I like to add some phosphorous into the soil, and you can do that with soft phosphate or rock phosphate, which are organic products. Because phosphorous is immobile in the soil, we add that as we're preparing the soil to have it right at root level.
What is 'double digging'?
Double digging is a archaic technique that's very seldom used anymore. When I used to teach at Ohio State I would have my students double dig beds just as a little experience, but we dig out 12 inches of soil, amend the subsoil, amend the backfill that we've removed, and put it back into the soil. It's a beautiful way to amend soil, but very labor intensive.
Do I need to double dig my garden bed?
No, you don't really need to double dig. It's the ideal, however, not real practical, and when we're doing new gardens and numerous new gardens we'll use a rototiller. Till deeply, and if you're concerned about a hard pan developing, which sometimes can happen with rototillers, you can go into that sublevel with a fork, work it up, and add your organic amendment. But many times we're using tillers, tilling in the good organic amendments.
What is garden 'tilling'?
Garden tilling is working the soil, and turning it over. It can be done mechanically, or manually and some of the benefits of tilling is that we want to work organic material into the soil. Organic matter breaks down a lot slower once it's in the soil and not exposed to the sun's rays. So if we till and we work amendment in we help improve the structure of the soil and we get that organic matter down into the soil where it won't break down as fast.
How deep do I need to till when preparing my garden bed?
When preparing your garden bed, we like to till at least 9 to 10 inches. If you can till lower, that would be great, but that's usually quite difficult to do. But 9 to 10 inches is sufficient, and just be sure that if you are using a rototiller that you're not creating a hard pan in a specific area - that's a layer of soil that's compacted - as the water will not drain through that and roots will not penetrate that. So, again, we need to work that with the garden fork or a shovel if that develops.
How do I add soil amendments to my garden?
What we like to do is prepare a lot of gardens, both for my personal garden as well as for clients, and we will come in and usually we will till first. We will use a Rototiller because we're doing pretty large areas. We come in and till and then we add amendments in stages, so we'll add some of the soil amendment in, till it in, add some more, and till until we have a soil that can really be worked with your hands. And that's a sign that your soil is ready to be planted, if you can actually go in and plant with your hands.
What is a good soil recipe for a great garden bed?
One that I like to use is this: four inches of organic matter. And I use a combination of different organic amendments. I like to use two inches of a composted amendment that contains sewage sludge as well as leaf humus. And then I will also, in clay soils, use two inches of Canadian Sphagnum peat moss. Research has shown that this combination of the compost and the Sphagnum is a wonderful recipe to improve the soil structure, and in clay soil, improve the drainage.
