Getting your garden ready for spring
It's that time of year again. The days are getting longer, and with them comes the promise of warmer weather and lush gardens. To really make your yard shine this spring and summer, you'll need to prepare it for the new season: clean up last year's garden, add more compost if needed, make sure to stagger the planting times for plants with different maturity times—and so on. If you're feeling overwhelmed by all these tasks and have no idea where to start or what steps need to be taken first, then let us break everything down for you.
Start planning and preparing your garden.
Planning is the first step to any garden, but it's especially important when you're growing plants that need a lot of attention and care. Before you start planting, take some time to plan out what each area of your garden will be used for. It's best to have a separate area for each type of plant because they all have different needs--some need more water than others; some need more sun than others; some will spread quickly while others only grow tall enough for children to reach them at eye level.
You'll also want to make sure that there aren't any rocks or large pieces of wood buried in the soil so they don't damage roots later on when they grow through them!
Clean up last year's garden.
It's time to clean up your garden. You may have a lot of work ahead of you, but it's worth it! Once you've removed all the rocks and debris, turn over any loose soil with a tiller or garden fork. This will allow nutrients from last year's plants to break down and be absorbed by new seeds as they grow.
Next comes weeding--this can be done by hand or with an old-fashioned hoe (or even a shovel). Weeds will take away from your flowers' growth space so make sure they're gone before planting anything in their place!
Do a soil test.
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Get a soil test. A soil test can tell you what nutrients your soil is lacking, and if you don't know what nutrients are missing, you can't add them. Soil tests are inexpensive and easy to do at home or in your local nursery.
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Add compost to the beds every year (or more often if necessary). Compost contains many of the essential ingredients that plants need to thrive: carbon, nitrogen and minerals in just the right proportions for healthy growth!
Add more compost if needed.
If your soil test results show a need for more compost, it's time to get busy. Compost is an excellent soil amendment and will help improve the structure of your garden beds. A good-quality compost contains nutrients that plants need, as well as beneficial microbes that break down organic matter into nutrients for the plants themselves.
Make sure to stagger the planting times for plants with different maturity times.
Scheduling your garden is just as important as choosing the right plants. You can have a beautiful garden, but if you plant everything at once and then have nothing to harvest for weeks on end, it won't be worth much. For example, if you plant tomatoes and peppers together in spring and then wait until fall before harvesting them all at once, those veggies will be gone before the weather cools down enough for other types of produce (like winter squash).
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Planting times should be staggered for different types of plants: The best way to stagger planting times is by grouping similar plants together in your garden beds--this way they'll mature at roughly the same rate so that there won't be gaps between harvests! This makes sense if we think about what happens when we eat a meal composed entirely from one food group (say pasta): We might feel tired after eating so much starch without getting enough protein or fat from other sources like meat or cheese respectively; similarly if all our vegetables grow too quickly together then some might not get enough sunlight or nutrients from surrounding foliage due to overcrowding issues.
It's time to get your garden ready for spring!
It's time to get your garden ready for spring. Start planning and preparing your garden by cleaning up last year's garden, doing a soil test, adding more compost if needed and making sure to stagger the planting times for plants with different maturity times. Gardening can be a fun and rewarding hobby. With so many different types of plants to choose from, it's easy to find something that will fit your needs and tastes.