Spring is Near
Time to Prep Your Garden.
Did you have a garden last year?
Do you plan on having one this year?
Then now is the time to start prepping.
If you have never had a garden, now is the time to start one.
With the ever-rising cost of food, a garden can provide some relief to your food budget. And while the initial upfront cost may hurt a bit, the years of food that your garden will provide are well worth that cost.
If you are starting a garden from scratch, the first thing you need to do is pick a location. It should be a location that gets direct sun, for a good part of the day or the sunniest area in your yard.
Then you have to determine if you’ll grow directly in the soil, or in garden boxes. Personally, I always create boxes with store-bought soil, because I know they fertilize the soil and contain the proper nutrients for growth. Often your local farm or landscape store will have soil specifically for vegetable gardens.
If you have existing garden beds or boxes from last year, now is the time to clean out the remaining plants and debris that may be left from last year, and or all the weeds that grew over winter.
The soil most likely will have compacted down over the winter, so it will need to be rototilled or worked with a rake/shovel to loosen it back up. You may need to add more soil. You will definitely need to add more nutrients, as they will have been used up by last year’s garden.
Whether you are creating a new bed or reviving an old garden bed, it is always wise to add eggshells to the soil. This adds calcium to the soil and prevents bottom rot on tomatoes and has a plethora of other benefits for garden soil.
- Eggshells: I save all my egg shells though out the year, and throw them in a bowl to dry naturally. When it’s time to add nutrients and soil to my garden, I grind the shells up as fine as possible and work it into my soil.
- There are also numerous other additions that you can add to the soil for a healthy garden, including used coffee grounds/tea bags, worm castings, fish, horse/rabbit/chicken manure(any animal that doesn’t eat meat. (NEVER dog or cat poop) Banana peal, wood ash, and or compost.
This is also a good time to prune roses and any trees or shrubs that need to be tidied up. (Please check care recommendations before pruning any plant. Improper pruning can cause plant growth problems.)
Check your garden tools. If your tools were put away properly, they should be fine to use year after year. But if we left them out in the winter elements, they may have to replace if they have rusted. Or replace handles if the wood softened or split.
Usually by about mid-February, garden and home improvement stores, will start putting out their garden seeds. So It’s also a great time to do a seed inventory and buy the seeds you need. I have found this seed box from amazon amazing for seed storage. I have much less waste from spilling or losing seeds, now that I have them all together in this tidy box. It’s under 20 US dollars. Before I bought it, I was constantly spilling seeds because those envelopes don’t exactly reseal once I ripped them open. Or I would lose seeds packets because I had no specific spot for them.
Plan your garden.
Now that you have your garden beds set up and your seeds on standby, you need to make a plan for your garden. First, it’s important to know what growing zone you are in. Once you do, find a seed start guide for your zone. This will tell you when to start your seeds.
When looking for that guide, be sure to find one that has a start guide for starting seeds indoors early, and in the ground, after the last frost.
You will need both.
Decide what you want to grow and make a list. Once you have that list, research companion planting for those plants. This will also (usually) tell you the plants that don’t do well together as well. This is important to growth and productivity.
Broccoli, for example, loves being grown around herbs, like basil, mint, and rosemary, because those plants repel the bugs that like to feast on broccoli. On the flip side, broccoli hates to be grown next to tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants (just to name a few). These plants are heavy feeders, which means when planted together, they will fight for nutrients. Which leads to poor growth and production.
Make a sketch, or blueprint for your garden, using your companion planting information. That way, when it’s time to plant, you don’t have to ponder where everything goes.
This may seem like a lot of work to do when you can’t even plant for several more months. But the more planning that you do now, the better your garden will be. More planning and more information make for a more productive garden.
The more you grow, the less you buy.
Happy gardening!!
Rowen is a mother, Wife, Domestic Violence Victims Advocate, community volunteer, and nature lover. Most of her time is spent with her family or volunteering in her community. Rowen has a degree in Psychology, with a concentration in Family Counseling and Minoring in criminal justice. Writing has been her passion since high school, and she enjoys using it to help others.
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