A Garden Takes Work, Prep, Patience I’ve Learned

When my wife and I first moved to our place in Cozy Corner, we were really excited to start a big garden. So that year in the spring, I bought a tiller and picked out a patch of ground for our new garden..

Of course, it was covered in grass and weeds. But I ran the tiller through it a few times and got the soil nice and crumbly. It was also full of weed and grass seeds that have been lying dormant for ages. Oblivious to this fact of nature, I immediately planted a bunch of tomatoes, peppers, green beans and whatever else we grew that year.

I kept it watered and weeded, at first. But then a big rain came. Our new garden patch turned into a jungle of weeds. If I recall correctly, I managed to keep some of my squash and tomatoes from getting overgrown with weeds. But the production was poor since they were competing for nutrients and water with so much weedy vegetation.

So where did I go wrong? I failed to think of my gardening bed as an investment. It’s like I deposited $10,000 in my bank account and then immediately racked up a bunch of recurring bills before any income arrived. It soon drained my bank account.

A lot of beginning gardeners experience this struggle. You cannot simply till up some raw ground and immediately plant a garden. You have to get rid of the weeds and grass first. Instead of tilling up the soil in the spring and planting, I should have started much earlier.

I’m not a big fan of tillage in the garden. It breaks up the “structure” of the soil. It disturbs the microbiome – all of the bacteria, algae, earthworms and other beneficial organisms that live in the soil. These organisms convert organic matter and minerals into nutrients that plants can consume. Without them, we are forced to use synthetic fertilizers, which often harm these organisms even more.

But if you want to grow an in-ground garden, you need to start with loose soil. And a tiller is the easiest way to accomplish this.

So if you’re thinking about starting a new spring garden in the ground right now, forget about it. Instead, start working on a fall garden. Find a patch of ground that gets full sun for most of the day. Look for a spot with fertile soil – somewhere with lush, green grass or weeds. Don’t worry, we’ll get rid of the grass and weeds. It’s better to start with fertile soil than a barren patch.

Mow it close to the soil. Then fire up the tiller and make a few passes. There’s no need to turn the soil into powder. Instead, break up the soil enough to turn over all the vegetation and roots. Give it a good watering, wait a few weeks, and till it and water it again.

At this point, cover it with a tarp. Use bricks, sandbags, posts, or whatever you have lying around to keep the tarp from blowing away in the wind. Weeds and grass will sprout under the tarp and then quickly die from lack of sunlight. Leave it covered for about a month (or at least a few weeks). Uncover it, till it, water again and recover with the tarp. Wait another month before removing the tarp.

Now, you should have a fairly weed-free garden. If you timed it right, it should be about time to plant a fall garden. From this point forward, you should always have something growing in the garden, or cover it with a tarp until you’re ready to plant. Nature abhors barren soil. Weed seeds will blow in or grass will encroach from the sides. So always keep something growing.

If you don’t want to plant a fall garden, plant a cover crop instead. Mustard greens are a great fall cover crop for a small garden. Sure, you can eat the mustard greens. But more importantly, you can grow a bunch of organic matter. In late winter, mow the mustard greens to the ground and incorporate them into the soil using a hoe or a light pass with the tiller. When you incorporate them into the soil, the greens release a gas that suppresses certain harmful microorganisms, especially rootknot nematodes.

Winter peas make another great cool-season cover crop. You can eat them. And since they are a legume, they have the ability to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a form that plants can use as a nutrient. Legumes store this nitrogen in root nodules. So never pull up a legume by the roots. Leave them in the ground and mow the tops. Use a hoe light tillage to incorporate the tops into the soil.

Then, next spring, you can plant to you heart’s content and have a much easier time dealing with weeds.

In the meantime, if you really want a spring garden this year, plant some veggies in pots around your porch.