Sunday, March 19, 2017

Preparing the garden bed for planting

Garden prepped with horse manure compost
Sunday, March 19, 2017

Time to get the garden beds ready for planting!  We are using horse manure compost with sea minerals topped with mulch.  This should give the garden an excellent start.
The first thing you should do for any bed is to have a soil test done to see what amendments your soil needs.  You can get a do it yourself kit or take some soil into your local extension office.  Mine has shown a lack of nitrogen and an excess of calcium in specific beds.  If you just want to get going on your garden, add a balanced organic fertilizer like Espoma's Garden-Tone.  You can also make your own fertilizer with just a few ingredients.
Make your own fertilizer, it's all natural and inexpensive

My hubby added the horse manure compost this week and we are adding the sea minerals and then topping with mulch next week end, giving the compost time to settle.  Adding minerals to the soil not only helps the plants grow, but also provide you with minerals when you eat the mineral rich veggies.  A win-win. 

Aerogarden after one week
Most of the seeds are up in the Aerogarden, just planted a week ago.  It doesn't take long!  They will soon be ready to transplant into the garden and pots.  I keep my seeds in ziplock bags in the fridge crisper so they last for years.  For any seeds that don't sprout, I will take the seed packet out and sow them all in a pot; a few might come up.  Be sure when you sow seeds indoors or outdoors that you capture what is planted where.  It is easy to forget what is already sown!

We also planted the red Terra Rosa and purple Purple Majesty potatoes in the potato boxes today.  We let them sprout on a plate that we kept in the sun.  This helps to accelerate the harvest by 2 weeks.  It is just good to do so you can see what eyes will sprout.  When you plant your seed potatoes, you want to plant them so the eye is toward the sky.  They should break through the soil with green shoots in 2 weeks.
Time to plant potatoes, even if you only have a patio

If you are thinking of putting in a garden bed, here is a rather each way to do it.  If you don't have much space, try pots.  You can grow an amazing amount and an amazing variety just in pots!
Put in a new garden bed the easy way-really
Decorative container gardening for edibles

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