How to Prepare Your Soil for a Vegetable Garden

Depending on what you are growing, certain crops grow well in sandy or clay soils, but most crops prefer a rich, crumbly loam soil that is full of life, like microbes and earthworms. Soil can be built up with compost, shredded leaves, fertilizers and other soil builders readily available from your local Build it store. If you want a good fertile vegetable garden, then you had better start with the soil, here are some tips to make sure that your garden will be a raging success.

How to Prepare Various Types of Soil into Rich, Crumbly Loam Soil for Your Garden

Clay Soil

Clay soil holds moisture well, unlike sandy soil, the fine soil particles stick together, which allows for poor drainage and air reaching plant roots. The solution to this, is to add as much organic matter such as shredded leaves, peat moss, gypsum and compost over time, to break up the soil.

Sandy Soil

Sandy soil on the other hand drains too quickly, allowing too much air to reach the plants roots, this results in the plant losing both nutrients and moisture. You can build sandy soil up by adding shredded leaves, peat moss and compost over time.

Tilling

Tilling is a fantastic way to break up the soil and to correct nutrient or pH imbalances, but over tilling will result in a powdery dust that dries and packs like hard concrete when it rains. If the soil is too wet It is important to note that tilling wet soil can damage the soil’s structure inhibiting future plant growth.

Double Digging

To aerate poor soil we recommend double digging, this is an old practice for improving the drainage. How it works is that you remove the top row of soil to a depth of about 1 foot, then you loosen the dense layer of soil, found just below the topsoil layer that you removed.

Once you have loosened the subsoil with a spading fork, you can then deposit the reserved topsoil back into the garden bed again. If double digging sounds like too much work, you can always build a raised bed and avoid the problem altogether.

The Best Soil for a Vegetable Garden and Root Crops

Raised-Bed Gardens

Raised-bed vegetable gardens solve a number of issues, it’s one way of making a bed more hospitable to root crops such as carrots. Simply fill with a custom mix of soil ideally suited to the crop that you are growing. It is important to note that raised beds warm up more quickly in spring, this allows you to plant earlier, but raised beds tend to dry out more quickly and will require more irrigation.

Irrigation

A good soil mix with organic matter will hold more moisture, vegetable gardens are highly dependent on moisture, so irrigation is very important if you are unable to keep your hand on it manually at all times. A drip irrigation system is a good idea, they are easy to install and keep moisture at ground level where there’s less evaporation. Another benefit is that you can attach a timer to this system so that you know exactly how much water you are providing your soil beds.

Seeding

Germination rates decrease every year for most seeds, so it is best to use fresh seeds to get the best germination results. It is recommended that you sow more seeds than is recommended if using up older seed. Preparing slightly indented rows will make it easier to track seeds and keep them in place. Small seeds can be sown with a seed dispenser while the larger seeds are easily sown by hand.

Portable Greenhouse

Portable greenhouses are inexpensive and create a microclimate by warming up during the day and retaining heat at night. A portable greenhouse is a gardener’s best friend, in that you can start planting earlier.

Weeding Your Vegetable Garden

Last but not least, weeding your vegetable garden needs to be done on a regular basis, before the weeds develop their renowned root systems. An effective way to do this is by hoeing the soil with a garden tool, but be careful when working around young vegetable plants, that you do not dislodge them and damage their roots. There you have it, not too complicated, happy planting!

For your convenience all the above tools and materials are available from your local Build it Gansbaai and Hermanus or you can order online from the comfort of your own home.