Preparation for Spring

A young friend of mine recently asked my advice on starting a vegetable garden this spring, particularly wanting to know how much sun vegetables would need. To have a successful garden you need at least 6 hours of sun. More is better, of course. Most suburban lawns don’t get this much sun, so there’s a first challenge!

I told her another important issue is soil preparation. If you don’t amend the soil, you are wasting your time and money! Most of us don’t have either to spare. The soil in East Tennessee is clay-like, but it can easily be amended with peat moss or compost. Given the time, you can make your own compost. Here is a good how-to on composting:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/dirt-the-movie/composting.html

My husband and I moved into our present house on the top of a ridge in 1997, and all the good soil had long ago washed down the hill. What was left was a mixture of rocks and clay. In the spring of 1998, we started on the landscaping and vegetable gardens. Here’s one of our beds:

It's at the back of the driveway, and is 23 feet long, 4.5 feet wide, and 22 inches deep. We call it the spaghetti garden because of its shape--looks like it would be good to grow spaghetti! You can see some spinach emerging. I planted it last fall with the help of the grandchildren.

 

We worked very hard on amending the soil. After we put in the railroad ties, we dug out the existing soil, sifted it (yes! we really did), and chopped in peat moss since we didn’t have any compost at that point. This has produced an excellent garden. Each subsequent spring, my husband tills in additional organic material to make it better.

Here is another lantana cutting from the greenhouse:

  

 Here's dreaming of warmer weather!