Just a quick word about ground preparation. Sadly and as with most things in life doing the boring mundane things well leads to long time joy and satisfaction.
If you haven't yet there is still time to give your garden a good dig. (More on ways of digging in a later post), Just turn the soil over and remove as many stones as you can. Do it now!! I normally pay the Junior Gardener and the Under Gardener in smarties for doing this for me. This part does really pay dividends. I always wonder where the heck all the stones come from because no matter how many I dig out this year there will be more next. Even worse if you live in a modern or new build house this is when you find out where the builders dumped all the brick rubble I'm afraid. I helped a friend set up a new plot last year and the bricks we dug out went towards a fairly substantial wall!
The junior gardener looking for more stones
Anyway, once you have dug it over then its time to dig in some "organic material". We produce and use masses of compost over the year and this is where it goes mostly. I'll talk about composting sometime but thats a whole subject on its own. If you don't have any compost you can of course buy some in in great big bags or sometime get it from your council. If your plot is fresh you might also want to apply some manure to it. I love a bit of shit in the garden me! If you are digging dung in please please please make sure it is well rotted down, I get a delivery every year and it gets dumped in a dark corner of the garden for a year to rot down before use. Also. And this is getting more important. Know your source. There have been many reported cases where dung applied to a garden has actually made the garden almost infertile due to the amount of pesticides used on the farm and passed through the animal. Disaster! Ask the farmer or ideally get it from an organic source if you can. My prefered shit of choice is horse but cow will do and the creme de la creme is chicken shit. It is so full on with nitrogen though it really needs proper rotting - and a whole stack of chickens!!
Fairly well dug. (Note the surface coating of shit!)
Anyway, once you've done all this, taken paracetamol and paid the chiropractors bill its time for yet more soil prep! Rake your soil to what the garden books call a "fine tilth". This means get as many stones out and make it as smooth as you can be bothered with in my book.
When this is finished, on a normal cold winter I'd cover the soil with a bit of polythene to help warm it up for planting in. I don't think you'll need to bother this year it's so warm. It's still a bit too early for planting anything much in the ground up here so now its time to kick your wellies off, pour a cup of tea and plan what you want to grow..........
More soon! Happy digging!
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