I am getting ready to transplant quite a few of my spring crops this morning
so I thought I would give you all a quick look at how I prep my beds for spring planting
now I do have a little bit of a cheat built in I do some of the prep work the fall before
planting and this is really the key because it allows me to get in and plant even earlier in the
spring and be sure to subscribe if you're curious about that process because i will be showing that
in a subsequent video but today we're going to focus on spring bed prep so the very first thing
i want to mention for prepping garden beds is that you may want to consider having a soil test done
so i had one done two years ago two falls ago and i like to do them every two to three years
if possible and this is especially important if i'm starting out in a new a completely new
area so if you are gardening in a new spot i highly suggest getting a lab a soil lab test
done i like to use Kinsey agricultural services because they give a lot of recommendations about
application rates and what you should add to your soil and i found that very helpful now for example
when i did my soil test two years ago it came back that i was very low in nitrogen so based on that
information in the spring i did a top dress with an all-natural it was actually a lawn fertilizer
a high it was like an 8-0-0 high nitrogen formula and applied that to all of my beds it was about a
month before i planted anything and then I've also been focusing on adding natural high nitrogen so
like chicken, pelletized chicken manure and other good organic sources of nitrogen so this year i
won't be adding any specific amendments but i am adding compost which i like to do every year
so let's take a look at these beds so what you may notice here is i've got everything in a row
format and this is simply a personal preference it's it makes it easier for me to plant back
here so this is what i've gone with but i do the same process with my small beds up here as well
and a big part of the prep in the fall is getting these raised planting rows formed
i then try to always get them planted with cover crop
or at the very least mulched heavily with something like grass clippings or leaf mulch
so in the spring what i end up doing is either just brushing away the residue from the cover
crop things like daikon radish the leaves die off and i can just kind of brush them out of the way
if there's mulch in the way i just kind of pull it off to the sides of the beds and if it's
an overwintered cover crop i will terminate it and allow the residue to remain as mulch
so after i have the mulch pushed out of the way a bit and if you have a smaller amount than this
you could certainly just leave it in place and work it into the soil i mulch pretty heavily so i
like to just push it out of the way after i'm done with that step i will add a couple of inches thick
layer of compost now i use mushroom compost because that's what i have available but
whatever you have if it's your homemade compost if it's good composted manure just anything to
add some nutrition and organic matter to that soil so i'm going to add that compost to the top
and the next step is to use a garden fork to both incorporate the compost a little into the soil
and open up my soil so if you had really nice loose loamy soil to begin with you could probably
skip this step entirely but because i am dealing with heavy dense clay i like to get in there and
aerate the soil a little each spring and this does open up and aerate the soil with
minimal disruption to the microbes in the earthworms and the other things that are
living in the soil so this is as easy as driving that fork in giving it a couple little wiggles
and that's it
then i just smooth the planting surface out a tad
and i'm ready to plant now as i mentioned some of the prep work is being done beforehand so ideally
the fall before i want to plant an area i will come in and create raised rows or planting beds
i create a devoted walkway where i lay down cardboard and this is agricultural hay mulch
and then as long as i have time i will plant that bed in cover crop if i run out of time i will just
do a very heavy mulch with an organic material like grass clippings or leaf mulch or something
of the like so you can see here these are two new planting rows that i formed last fall cardboard
down i still haven't gotten the hay on top but these were both planted in daikon radish last
fall i'm going to be planting i'm planting the one behind me up this spring this one's going to be
held for my warm season crops so in the meantime i've got a spring cover crop blend on this bed
this has oats and winter peas and something else that i can't remember but i just sewed
this a couple weeks ago now this process has worked really well in particular when dealing
with my clay soil so as you may know clay tends to hold a lot of water and we get quite a bit of
rain in the spring so there are many years where it's the end of may even the beginning of june
before this soil is dried out enough to be able to work so this became a necessity for me to be able
to plant my early spring crops now by raising these rows up it allows for quicker drainage
and the fact that i don't have to get in there until every single spring
is not only awesomely beneficial for the soil but also allows me to get an implant earlier but i've
got a lot of planting to do so i'm gonna get to it thanks for watching and i'll see you next time