Creating beds and borders

CREATING BEDS AND BORDERS

So once the soil type and texture are known and you  know what kind of drainage you have and what kind of amendments you’ll need to add – time to get to the actual work. Assemble your tools – spade and fork would be perfect – your amendments and fertilizer and brace yourself.

OH, MY ACHIN’ BACK

The best method for doing this is called double digging or double trenching.  Dig a trench about a spade blade deep and about a foot wide on one side of your plot of ground and pile the dirt to the side away from the plot. Loosen the soil in the bottom of the trench with your spade or fork and dig another trench next to the first one. Put the dirt from the second trench into the first trench, mixing in  your sand and/or organic matter and a good all purpose organic fertilizer – 5-10-10 is a good all around fertilizer. And yes, we will be discussing what those numbers mean.

Continue across the plot digging trenches and filling them – when you get to the last one, fill it with some of the dirt  from the first trench and your amendments and you can go take a nap. Use the left over dirt to fill in holes in your lawn or make mudballs to throw at neighbors you don’t like.

I know this sounds like a lot of work. Hell, it is a lot of work. But you only have to do it once – if you skip this step you’ll be fighting with your soil for all the years to come. Better to do it right the first time. Of course if you already have good soil, none of this is necessary and I’m really jealous.

For borders, which are beds next to buildings, walkways,driveways, etc. this is almost mandatory; for stand-alone beds there’s an easier way. Raised beds or sunken beds. If you don’t already have beds the size you want or you have really yucky dirt or you just want to do it the easy way raised or sunken beds are the best answer. They must be built with a weather resistant wood – NOT pressure treated, that stuff is toxic – like cedar and the lumber can be a bit pricey. If you have any carpentry skills you can do it yourself – you’re just building a simple rectangle (or square). You can also buy kits at many garden centers and from catalogs like Gardener’s Supply Company. Then order the amount of perfect dirt you need or buy some top soil and mix it with sharp sand and compost yourself and voila! – instant flower bed or vegetable patch. For a sunken bed you need to dig out of your dirt a bed the size you want – should be at least two feet deep – and fill it with a good soil mix. This is a great solution unless you live in an area, as I do, where the grass is a stolon grass like bermuda. If I tried this I’d be spending all my time yanking the damned grass out of my sunken bed. If you live where you have turf – lucky you. Some gardeners claim sunken beds are better than raised beds because they aren’t as exposed but I think you should choose which kind you’d like to try.

Remember not to make your bed impossible to work in by not leaving room for you to get around and weed, mulch, harvest, hide out, whatever. With a border, don’t make it so wide you can’t get to the back of the border to do necessary work. Unless you have tiny munchkins to do it for you.