Garden Selection Picking The Spot

By Thomas Fryd

When selecting a spot to plant a garden decide on a place where the soil is deep, where drainage is good and where the vegetables to be grown will have full exposure to the sunshine. A gentle slope to the south or to the south-east is ideal. Rows should run north and south so that the vegetables to be grown will enjoy the maximum amount of sunlight. Never locate the kitchen garden near strong growing shrubs, hedges or large trees because their extensive root system will rob the crops of moisture and soil nourishment.

The Soil

The depth of the soil is more important than the nature of the soil. With proper preparation almost any type of soil can be improved and made fertile enough to produce vegetable crops. It should be spaded (turned) over to a minimum depth of one foot. Two feet is considered proper and thorough by professional green thumbers, but then not all of us are professional green thumbers.

Drainage

The roots of vegetables need air as well as moisture; consequently good drainage is essential. To be tender and fit for the table vegetables should be grown unchecked from the time the seeds germinate. This means they must not suffer for moisture. But they must not suffer for lack of good drainage either; therefore if natural drainage is poor, plastic drain pipes should be laid.

Turning the Soil

Dig deeply the full depth of the spade which is one foot. This should be done each autumn and every spring just as early as the soil is tillable, you can also put wireless outdoor speakers to improve your garden. If the earth has been spaded thoroughly in the fall of the year; and it should be as the earth benefits from exposure to the wind and rain and to winter frosts, then digging over in the spring with a spading fork will suffice. This should be done early just as soon as the frost is out of the ground and if the soil has dried enough, so that it will crumble readily after being squeezed into a ball with the hand.

The procedure of delving over a plot of ground with a spade should be an orderly operation. Begin by digging a trench one foot deep and one foot wide across one end of the plot, you can also add a wireless outdoor speakers to make your garden more attractive. By means of a wheelbarrow dump the removed soil at the opposite end. Now spread a layer of cow manure or compost, leaf mold or peat moss, along the bottom of the trench, and begin digging.

Spade the strip of ground along the trench, throwing as you do so each spadeful forward onto the manure. In this manner a new trench is formed. Now place manure or compost or whatever it is you are using, in the bottom of the second trench and proceed to spade the soil from the next strip over onto it. In digging you work backward from the edge of the first trench to the opposite end of the plot. When the end of the plot is reached the last trench is filled in with the soil that was dumped there from the first trench dug. When digging, thrust the blade of the spade six inches back from the edge of the trench, straight down the full depth of the blade into the soil; then lift the spadeful and throw it forward, giving the spade a twist at the same time so that the soil is turned upside down. This will expose new soil to the action of the wind, rain and temperatures. Fall digging should be left to stand in the rough, thus permitting its tempering and conditioning by the elements.

There is actually nothing very difficult to this mode of tilling. It is termed; "Single Trenching or Single Digging. - 29857

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