Cultivating and Mixing Soil
After you have worked on creating a new garden, creating an outline, lifting the sod, and testing your soil, you will need to add new soil to the garden area and mix it well with the soil that you already have. Using a shovel to continually mix the new soil, compost and manure will work all the soil (new and old) elements together and you will have a nice soft garden that's easy to work with.

Posted Thursday, April 6, 2006

If you have any type of cultivator that attaches your lawn tractor or other equipment you can mix your soil together without the added sweat involved with using a shovel. When you work with a shovel and mix your soils together you will find rocks to pick out so you won't have to worry about them later. After you have the soil all mixed together you are going to need to use your rake and flatten out the soil a bit for a nice start when making rows to plant your seeds and plants. Flattening out the soil in the garden will leave you with a flat smooth surface that contains "light and fluffy" soil.

Arranging rows so that you have your vegetables or your plants exactly where you want them to grow all summer long, you can start to plant your garden. Be sure you are only planting the plants that are going to survive the colder months of spring, and for small plants that you were growing inside or in the greenhouse make sure that it is really time for out planting for each species. Sometimes we get so excited about planting our garden that we will put everything in the vegetable garden at once, only to have some die off because it is still too early for them.

The rocks that you picked from the soil can be used as markers at the end of the rows where you are planting seeds. You can use large sticks to mark the ends of the rows as well. No matter if you are planting vegetables or if you are planting flowers and bushes, you should add mulch around the plants (once partially grown) so that they are kept moist. After you are finished planting in the vegetable garden, using recyclable materials like plastics, newspapers or even old padding (from under carpets) can be laid down between rows so you don't have so many weeds to fight off.