How To Prepare Your Garden For Planting Vegetables
Spring is Here!
For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s springtime! Many of you started your seeds indoors months ago when it was still too cold to grow them outside. You have been nurturing them, waiting in anticipation for that last frost date when its warm enough to plant them outdoors. You’ve already begun transitioning your indoor seedlings by putting them outside a few hours a day, gradually increasing the time they are outside so they are ready for their permanent home in you garden. You can hardly wait to get your hands in the soil and feel the warm sun on your back. The only thing that’s left to do is to get your garden bed ready!
Let’s take Mary Jo, for example. She had the space to plant vegetables but felt it would take too much time, was too complicated and would cost too much money to prepare her garden soil. In the video below, from the $10 Garden Series, Mary Jo and I prepare her soil to plant her vegetables. I’ve included detailed how to steps, below the video.
Preparing your garden soil for planting vegetables is a critical step in a successful garden. Taking the time to do it right will pay big dividends down the road to a productive and healthy garden that will put food on your table. I am going to show you a 3 step process to prepare your garden bed in a quick, simple way that will fit into your budget and will help you grow productive, healthy plants that will give back to you many times over.
Step 1 – Loosen the Soil
By now, you should have decided on a sunny location for your garden that gets at least 6-8 hours of sun a day. If your soil is compacted, the roots will be working harder to push down into the soil and won’t be able to take up nutrients and water properly, which means they won’t grow well. Water won’t be able to permeate heavily compacted soil, and your plant roots will suffocate and won’t get the air and water they need. Loose, fluffy soil will produce strong, sturdy, healthy plants that will be able to put their energy in to producing veggies for your table.
The first step to preparing your garden for planting is to loosen the soil to a depth of about 12 inches with a shovel, pitchfork or tiller, using the technique I show in the video above. This step is especially important in a new garden plot, or if your soil is compacted. If you are planting in an existing garden plot and your soil is loose, you may be able to skip this step and move on to step 2.
Step 2 – Remove Weeds and Rocks
The second step to preparing your garden bed is to remove the weeds and rocks. This will help your veggies be able to take 
up all the nutrients they can from your soil without competing with the weeds. Since weeds grow vigorously, they will also compete for space by choking out the veggies and must be removed.
As you loosen the soil with your pitchfork (step 1), you will also be loosening the weeds. With each turn of the soil, gently pull the weeds to remove them from the soil clump. As you pull them, shake the soil off the weeds, leaving as much soil as you can in your garden bed (see video above). Repeat this process all around your garden bed until all soil is loosened up and the weeds are removed and disposed of in the trash. I do not like to compost weeds because I don’t want the chance of weed seeds that end up in my compost popping up in my garden at a later date.
After the weeds are removed, if there are still large chunks of soil in your garden bed, pound on them with a rake to break them up so the soil is nice and loose. Remove any rocks you find in the soil.
Step 3 – Amend the Soil
Amending, or improving your garden soil, is of the most important investments of time and money you can make for your garden. Amending your soil will feed your plants, which in turn will feed you.
You may be one of those gardeners who is blessed with beautiful, nutrient rich soil. However, most of us have less than perfect soil in our gardens and need amend our soil with organic materials. Organic material such as compost, will not only increase the nutrients in the soil, but also loosen up compacted soil, so that air, water, and roots can penetrate.
An easy and effective way to amend existing garden soil is by adding compost – it has the nutrients needed to help your garden explode with growth. This can be done inexpensively by finding a soil company in your area that sells compost in bulk. In my area, a yard (a small pick up load) of compost can be purchased for around $40 , and picked up with a borrowed or rented pick up truck, if you don’t have one. The same amount of bagged compost purchased from a garden center will cost $150-$200. I usually split a load with a friend, making it even more cost effective.
Add a few inches of compost to your garden bed, working it in with your pitchfork or shovel, as I show in the video above, taking care not to step on the soil as you work it in, so as not to compact it again!
Once you have worked a few inches of compost into your soil, water it by hand, or add a drip irrigation system, soak it down, and you are ready to plant your garden!
Start your Garden Today!
If you haven’t started growing your garden yet, you’re in the right place! I’ll show you how in a quick, simple and inexpensive way with my free growing guide “Grow 3 Vegetables in 6 Weeks”. After reading it, you’ll know just what to do to get started. You’ll not only experience the health benefits of growing and eating your own delicious food, but you’ll also see the positive impact it will make on your mind and soul.
Register to get your free copy and then comment to let me know what you are looking forward to about learning to grow your own food!
Have you prepared your garden for spring planting yet? Leave me a comment and let me know how you like to do it, I’d love to hear from you!
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Awesome update thank you for sharing have a blessed day Kim and family
the garden is coming along nicely now we have our mower back and strimmer we going to leave some of it long in the back garden for the wildlife
Hi Linda,
Glad to hear things are coming along nicely over there! Great work! CaliKim
Great info. I have been doing home composting with all the organic kitchen scraps , banana peel etc.
In Houston we have had lots of rain. But I am inundated with earwigs that are eating my eggplant, beans, squash , cucumber and some tomatoes..I saw on web using oil and soy sauce traps and going to give a try. Any suggestions that are reliable to get rid of these earwigs? Thanks
I have the same problem every year. I tried planting Marigolds to prevent them from coming – as read on the internet – but they just ate those all up too! I have used the soy sauce and oil traps, and they work SO well. The first time I set them out, I had them full with earwigs – I couldn’t believe how many were lurking in my gardens! I set them out early in the spring this year, even before I see the earwigs to get on top of them right away. My neighbor now uses the same traps to keep them out of her clematis successfully. Good luck!
Great sharing here! I love it! Great content, too!
Got our seedlings planted outside today. soil was good and loamy in the raised beds and added some organic soil/compost mix to bring the level up to where I wanted it because some of the peat moss from previous years had broken down (as it should). Expanded the in ground garden and it was a chore to loosen up the compacted soil where the lawn used to be. wow the roots that were in there. going to try a small stand of corn again this year and we hope the squirrels will stay away this year (we have some ideas to try this year). Have it all planted (seedlings, seeds, and some store bought plants). Got corn, maters, peppers, some carrots, Broccoli, and two varieties of lettuce. Should be a nice healthy summer.
Wow. Sounds like you have done some time, labor intensive work out there! Great work! All of that fresh food will be a amazing! Thank you so much for sharing Tim! Great work – keep it going. CaliKim
Please share your ideas about squirrels and your corn as my corn is now 6′ tall and the last two mornings I am waking up to eaten ears! Going to try out a motion activated light and sound for pest control but it doesn’t come for a couple days! Thought about purchase some store bought ears of corn to leave out for the squirrel hoping they will leave my growing corn alone (ha, ha)
We also purchased compost from our local Waste Management company but was disappointed to find that it has small broken pieces of glass in it. Ended up filtering it down twice using mesh to pull out some of the glass and large pieces of wood. Plants love it. We have five – 4 X 4 X 4′ and one 4 X 8 X 4 raised beds with hoops above them. Loved the cattle panel idea, but couldn’t find it so we made hoops of PVC and tie strapped chain link fence to it and that is working very well. My tomato plants are now 7′ above the top of the raised beds and I cannot get to the tops without a ladder. The corn is doing very well and has already given us several ears until the squirrels found them. Carrots and radishes all grown and harvested, sugar snap peas and pole beans growing up the hoops with cauliflower and broccoli underneath loving the shade. Cucumbers and Cumshaw squash climbing up another bed hoop with Golden and Green Zucchini underneath the hoops enjoying some of the shade. Strawberries, blueberries and blackberries have taken over my last bed and now I want more beds . …… Hope everyone is enjoying the start of spring and summer. Growing is the best thing we do together!!!!
Dianna,
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you! Glad you are being so resourceful in the garden and sounds like it is now paying off BIG time! I’m sure by now, you are harvesting all kinds of garden fresh treats for your family! I”d love to hear more! Thanks for sharing and visiting my blog!
I watched a lot of Vietnamese videos on YouTube but I am happy when I found your channel. Your voice is clearly and easy understand.Of course , not all of them
Now include this guide , I understand easier and do better
Thank you so much for your guide
Hello Huong Vo -my apologies for the delayed response! You are welcome, so happy to hear that you are enjoying the videos and growing guide! How is your garden coming along now? Appreciate you stopping by!
Hi Kim, Love the blog. However, It’s hard to read the white lettering against the picture in the background. As I’am reading the white letters. They fade into the background and I lose my place. Anyways. just a tip.
CameraGuy is working on it! Thanks, Alberto!!
Fixed!! Check it out and tell us what you think?
Hello Alberto – my apologies for taking so long to respond to your comment! Glad you like the blog and thanks for the feedback! Lots to do to get a website up and running, and this is definitely on the list, making improvements every day to make it more user friendly! Are you growing a garden?
We add well rotted cattle manure every year to amend the raised beds. All the plants are all settled in now, and all the seeds planted and are all sprouting 🙂 Can’t wait to see how Mary Jo and getting along with her garden!
Awesome , Angie! So happy to hear things are growing well for you! Hope by now you are harvesting. Thanks for visiting my blog!
Hola Kim! First off lots of love from Baja!!! And now, thank you for the great info! Loved the series you did helping out Mary Jo. Always get great info from you and your videos! And you know what, also from your subscribers!!! The comments section is always interesting to me. Well here in Baja I do my own composting but it’s on a small scale. When I don’t have any here I head to the garden center to buy some and also buy worm castings regularly. So far the garden is doing well and the more I learn on how to prepar my soil the better my garden looks! Thanks again Kim and keep on blogging, love how this is growing!
As always, Rod, I love reading your comments. Always positive and so encouraging. Keep up the good work you do in caring for those around you with your garden!
This has helped me a lot! Before nothing would grow in my soil as it had no nutrients at all. Now I have a dozen tomato plants with bunches of flowers!
Hi Keiran – so awesome to hear! Just a few tips go a long way to making your soil something that will produce some tasty veggies for you! Appreciate you stopping by!
Hi Kim,
I live in North County part of San Diego. Our soil is very hard, clay like. Which is funny because we have so many fruit/nut trees that were here before we moved in (oranges, grapefruit, pomelos, limes, lemons, persimmon, and Macadamia nuts) that produce just fine. We’re newbies to gardening so what we did when we started was we built two garden beds on top of our soil. We chopped up the soil for over a week. Everyday we added water and chopped it up. We finally got some soil from Home Depot and got our bed started. Most of our stuff died. I got a pretty good yield from my cilantro, lettuce, and tomatoes but everything else died. I had snow peas that produced one pea and then died. I had carrots that grew but were about 2-4 inches in length and tasted horrible. After reading about my watermelon, cucumber and zucchini I decided to move them from the bed to their own large pots so they were in deeper soil and in direct sun. Some of them seem to be doing a lot better but still no production. I get a flower and then it dies. I also have sweet pepper plants and one seems to be doing great while the others grow a bit then shrink. My strawberries seem to be doing good but the berries are tiny and turn bright red too soon. About a month ago I did a fish fertilizer treatment on all of my plants which seemed to help. I’m at a loss. I want to have a fruitful garden. My trees and roses do so well. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Erica,
So sorry you are having trouble! Sounds like your soil might be lacking some nutrients. What kind of soil did you add and are you adding any fertilizer to the mix? And how’s the water situation there in SD – let me know how often and how much and perhaps we can troubleshoot. The most important thing is that you got started and are taking action! Don’t give up – we’ll get it figured out!
I live in st. Lucia, that’s in the caribbean. We only have two seasons, rainy and dry season. I’m a newbie to plant. I’ve started with peppers, eggplant, lettuce and tomatoes. They are coming aking slowly. I can’t seem to find any fish fertilizer and my lettuce are bolting. Can you help me out?
Hello Teckla – Congrats to taking action to growing your own food! Super fun to grow what you eat. Is it rainy there right now or dry? Lettuce might be getting too hot, check out my blog post on how to grow lettuce in the hot weather for some tips. You will also want to check out my new ebook, “Growing 5 Warm Weather Vegetables Made Easy” for some tips on your peppers, eggplant and tomatoes, as well as the ““How to Grow It” videos on my YouTube Channel. Hope this helps and thanks for stopping by!
If I want to say about your post in a word, I think I should say outstanding. Really I’ve got huge information on this post. When it comes to talking about gardening, soli is one of the best parts. in the vegetable garden, the soil is more important. Because it involved with our health directly. I will apply your suggestion in my vegetable garden. Thanks again for your effort.