If you’re thinking about building a garden, the first thing you need to do is select a location. Depending on where you live – whether in the city or on a 20-acre property – you may have several choices, or none at all.
If you live in an apartment and have no land to plant, you’re stuck with a container garden. But never fear – you can actually do quite a lot with a box garden.
If you do have a choice of where to put your garden, there are several things to take into consideration. Your first criteria should be sun. Most plants prefer a southern exposure for optimum growth. However, the light levels you need will depend on the plants you want to grow. Some plants, like vegetables and many flowers prefer full sun and a certain number of hours of exposure. Other plants, however, like ferns, shade-loving wildflowers and begonias prefer northern corners and low light levels.
If you’re planting vegetables for harvest, look for a southern exposure and run your rows from north to south. This way, all your plants will get sun from the east in the morning and from the west in the afternoon. In this arrangement, your plants should grow uniformly across the garden. If your garden faces southeast, you won’t get light from the western sun, so run your rows from northwest to southeast to get the best light.
For most gardeners, it’s important to get the most sunlight evenly distributed for the longest time possible. If you’ve ever seen window plants grow lopsided trying to compete for sunlight, you can see how uneven light affects plants. Draw a diagram of your garden plot to figure out how best to align your rows for even exposure to sunlight. Using a southern exposure is ideal since the sun gives half the sun on one side and half to the other. Using a northern exposure may give you such a small amount of light that it might as well not be any at all. Northeastern and southwestern exposures will give you uneven sunlight no matter how well you plan it out.
Plan out your garden on a sheet of paper before you begin planting. This process will help you clarify your goals and limitations before building your garden. If this is your first ever garden, don’t start off with a 40’ x 40’ plot. Gardens require lots of maintenance throughout the growing season – so don’t get in over your head from the get-go. Use your plan to decide what kind of plants you’ll grow. Tomatoes are a popular home garden plant, but if you hate them, don’t plant a whole row! Having a garden plan drawn out will save you time and money through the growing season.
If you’re starting a new garden, you’ll need to do a lot of work to get from grassy sod to rich, arable soil. When gardeners prepare large beds, they usually till the field so that the sod is turned under into the soil, but in a small garden it is more common to remove the sod. How do you do that? First, stake the garden area and line it off with string. The string will give you a straight path to follow. Cut the edges with a spade or small shovel following your line. If your garden is small, maybe 4’ x 10’, this won’t take long. A narrow garden strip may be broken up like a checkerboard, and the sod removed with your spade. Alternatively, you may do it in two long strips. Once the turf is cut, simply roll it up.
If you’re planning a large garden, however, preparing the soil is a bit more difficult. As described above, you’ll want to divide this up into foot-wide strips and then remove the sod from the soil. If you have access to a small mechanical tiller, use it. You’ll save lots of hours and lots of strain on your back. If you have to remove the sod by hand, don’t throw it away. If you have a compost heap, place the sod pieces there, grass side down. If you don’t have a compost heap, this is a good time to start one by stacking your squares of sod in a small area with the grass facing down. The sod will decompose as time goes on, giving you a lovely pile of rich compost. You can add vegetable matter to the pile as the seasons pass, including fallen leaves, garden trimmings and lawn clippings. By next year, you’ll have a wonderful natural (and free!) fertilizer for your garden.
Once you remove the sod, you’ll likely see that the soil is still in clumps. Break up these clumps with your spade – too many large clumps of dirt makes it difficult for tiny plant roots to penetrate the soil. If you’ll be planting seeds, the dirt must be very fine so the new rootlets can take hold in the soil. Use a garden hoe or spade to break down the clumps and then go over the area with a garden rake. It takes some practice to handle these tools efficiently. A hoe is designed to get rid of weeds and stir the surface of the soil. Move the hoe easily through the soil, kind of like sweeping with a broom. The same type of effort should be involved.
If you’re tilling up a new plot of land, there’s a good chance that the soil is imbalanced or lacking some of the nutrients necessary for plant growth. Look up your area’s county extension agency (or similar group) and see if they offer soil testing. This test will determine exactly what types of additives you should purchase to improve your soil. If you don’t have access to these services, try adding a general composted manure. While not ideal, the manure will add nutrients and broken-down plant matter to the ground, improving your soil.
Wait a few days before planting if you’ve recently added manure to your garden plot. The composting process breaks down almost all of the animals waste found in manure, but any small pockets of undigested material can be toxic to new plants. Once your soil has been prepared, you’re ready to start planting and building the garden of your dreams!
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