#11. Digging Beds to Prepare for Vegetable Planting
Cultivating the soil in their garden is the most basic step any gardener should take. Beds need to be prepared for planting and this means digging the soil, nourishing it and preparing the beds for your vegetable planting activities.
If the soil in your garden is of a poor quality, you need to add organic matter when you start digging. The best time to dig the beds is from October to December. During this time the soil is frost free and digging is easy. Further, once the beds are dug, they can be left till winter is almost ebbing away. The period ranging from mid-winter to early spring will leave the ground cold, wet and possibly frozen. Digging during this time is practically an impossible task. In fact soil should not be dug when the ground is wet. Doing so will cause damage to the structure of the soil and this in turn will lead to poor aeration and drainage.
There are different methods of digging and a brief overview of each method is provided below. The factors that influence your choice of digging method include the depth of the topsoil, type of soil drainage, and whether the plot was previously cultivated. You need to first clear the site of weeds completely before you get down to digging.
Single digging: is suited to plots where the soil texture is good, the plots have regular shapes and when you need to introduce large quantities of organic matter into the soil. Using a spade, dig trenches that are about a foot wide and as deep as the length of a spade. Put the soil from the last trench into the previous one and so on, working backwards on your plot.
Double digging: this method is useful when the ground has not been cultivated before or if you need to improve soil drainage. You need to dig to a depth of two spades Keep the two layers of soil separate – the subsoil and the topsoil. You may as well prepare yourself for some real hard work. You need to start transferring soil from the second trench to the first and so on taking care to put in the layers in the correct order.
Simple digging: is just that. You need to clear the soil surface of weeds and debris. This method is very suitable for irregular shaped plots and for working around existing plants. Work your way around the area lifting the soil with your spade and dropping it back.