How To Start A Garden In Your Yard The Easy Way

If you want to put in a vegetable garden in the Spring, it's a good idea to get the area ready to go now. Spring is a great time to plant because of all the rain, but it's a miserable time to dig a new garden because it's usually too wet. Here are some tips for an easy garden installation you can do now to be ready to plant in the Spring. You can actually do this technique any time of the year, but it's best to have a period of time before you plant.

First, mark out where you want your garden to be located. Choose a place that gets direct sunlight for most of the day and is close enough to run a hose to in the growing season. Somewhere you can get a garden cart into and out of easily. Next to a driveway is ideal for offloading garden additives.

Now get some old newspapers. Lay down at least four sheets, maybe a few more than that, over the whole area. Make sure no light can get to your grass below the newspaper. To keep it from blowing away, weight it down with mulched up leaves and grass clippings. Make sure the grass clippings don't have weed killer on them. These should be easy to find but there are other things you can use too. Think of anything that breaks down and feeds the soil. Straw, mulch, hay, even mulched up weeds will work nicely.

Don't worry about weed seeds because whether you put them into your garden area or not, they'll get there anyway. The key with weed seeds is to avoid letting them germinate.

Once you have a layer of newspaper and nice organic stuff, you wait. In the Spring the area will be grass free and ready to plant. Just open a slice of your mulch only large enough for your seeds or plants. Once they sprout, start to snug some straw or other mulch material up close to them.

This mulch will do several things:

1. Mulch will keep moisture in the ground. You will still need to water your plants, but you will water less often.

2. Mulch will keep weed seeds from germinating. If you see a weed sneaking up through your mulch layer, you can either pull it up and leave it on top to add to the mulch, or simply cover it with enough straw to block any light from reaching it. If it doesn't get light it will die.

3. Mulch will add fertility to your soil. As these additives break down, and they will sooner than you can believe, your plants will take what they need and leave the rest. It's good to use a variety of materials to provide a variety of nutrients.

Here are some suggestions: Go to your local coffee shop and collect the coffee grounds they throw away. See if local farmers have spoiled hay or straw you can have. Go to the pet stores and collect the rabbit poo. Sawdust and wood chips are good to use also, but in small quantities. All this goes onto your garden and builds fertility, keeps weeds out and holds moisture in the soil.

You do not have to dig this into your garden. Your plants roots stay in the top layers of the soil and the nutrients will trickle down to where they are every time you water or it rains. Think of how nature feeds trees and plants. Try to emulate nature in your gardening and you'll find success the "easy-on-your-back" way.

One last thing you must do. Find a few smaller flower pots and put them in your garden for toad-houses. Put them upside down and tilt them with a small stone so the toad can get in and out. These guys will keep the slugs and other menaces to a minimum. Provide a saucer of water as well.

That's it - while your friends are double digging, you'll be grilling with a beverage knowing nature is doing all your hard work.

View the original article here

How to Start a Garden and Get the Best Grass Lawn

You may want it later as a foundation for paths or perhaps to drain a lawn. If the soil is naturally stony, save the stones. Grade them as you gather them into drainage, wall or path surface size. Do not bother to try to pick up small stones. These help aerate the soil.?

Once the site is cleared, you must dig and dig. This is probably best done with a fork rather than a spade, which is liable to chop through rooted tap weeds like dandelions thus propagating them. The fork will loosen the long roots and enable you to remove them. Always keep a container handy for these roots, and get rid of them by burning as soon as possible. If the tops are leafy, twist off this vegetation and use it on the compost heap which you ought to get going as soon as possible. If your soil is very light or sandy, you may find that only a spade is suitable for digging.

It is sometimes possible to hire a rotary digger. This will turn the ground over and also help to level it quite efficiently, but once done you should take special care to rake up all weeds, roots and fibrous matter.

Often the worse trouble in a new garden is mud, particularly if the builders have recently left. So it is to everyone's advantage to cover the ground as quickly as possible. You may be able to anticipate bigger jobs this way, for example, if you have planned where patio, paved paths or drives are going, then have a load of gravel delivered and get these areas covered.

A grassed area makes a garden look neater immediately. It keeps down the mud brought into the house, gives the children somewhere to play, keeps the soil in good heart until you are ready to make beds and borders, gives you valuable humus in the form of grass cuttings.

If there is grass already - and on building sites old meadow often exists - it can be mown for immediate tidiness. Most likely it can become a good lawn. Remember that grass is a good clean covering, and is well worth keeping even if it covers a larger area than you actually want as lawn. Even if you plan to get going on beds and borders fairly soon, you will find it an advantage to get grass cut as soon as possible for you can cut into the short turf with a spade much more easily than you will be able to into the hussocks of uncut grass. Another advantage is that once the lawn is down, big jobs such as planning a new border can be shelved to a convenient planting time.

Never take up grass roots or turves to burn (the pestilent couch grass is an exception). Rotted grass roots and turves make highly valued loam.

The turves you cut away when you design the borders need only be skimmed off the surface. First cut through with a spade, making a rough square, then slide the spade along under the turf as though it were a fish slice. You can then stack the turves grass side downwards. When they have rotted, they can be put back on the garden as good fibrous loam. You can also use turves stacked in this way as banks or low dividing walls. Pull out any tap roots of weeds.

Should you wish, you can let the turf stay and dig right through it, taking a slice of grass with every spadeful. In this case, see that you turn each spadeful so that the grass lies at the bottom and becomes well covered. It will then rot.

You can alternatively prepare the new garden plot to be sown with lawn seed for a stunning grass lawn.

View the original article here