Hopefully you have read the post about creating beds and borders on this site so that you know you have properly prepared your soil. If you’re now ready to plan your bed or border, here goes.

This is not rocket science but does require some thought. First of all, how will the bed or border be viewed? Is it a border alongside the house or another building? Then the only view will be a frontal view. If the border is along a driveway or walkway, the view may be from more than one side. If the bed is an island bed or stand-alone bed, from what point will most people be looking at it? You need to think about these things for obvious reasons – you want your bed or border to look good from any angle from which it might be viewed. A border alongside a building must have the taller plants toward the back, smaller plants in the front and medium plants in the middle. A border along a walkway will be seen from the front and back, so to speak, and must look good on both sides. A stand-alone bed in, say, the middle of the front lawn, must look great from your front window and from the street. So think before you plant.

SEVERE NO-NOS

A common mistake made is not allowing for a plant’s size at maturity. Before you plant. make sure you know how big it will get when it grows up. There’s nothing wrong with crowding plants a bit in a controlled environment like a bed, border or container, but you don’t want something that turns into an impossible to remove monster taking over an entire section of the bed, especially if its a perennial. An overgrown annual will at least have the decency to die at the end of the season and you will have learned a lesson, but a perennial will have to be dug up and moved. Not fun. Also, watch out for plants that can become rampant, like mint. If mint is happy, it will run through the entire area before you can catch it and there are a number of plants like it. Some just spread, some go to seed, but all can become real pain. Do some research, ask at a nursery, call your county extension service if you’re in doubt.

CONDITIONS

You need to group together plants that like the same conditions – soil, sun exposure and watering. Otherwise, some will thrive and some will dive. Don’t put plants that like shade and wet feet together with plants that like sun and drier soil.

If you want a perpetually handsome bed or border, you also need to plan for the seasons. When the spring-bloomers are done with flowering you need to have other plants in the bed that can step in and take over. If you’re doing a perennial bed, it will probably be a few years before the plants reach the point where that’s possible but you can fill in with annuals until then. If you leave a little room, you can put annuals in any bed you’re planning – they can be handy things. But you need to think about color and texture, what will bloom when, will there be ugly bulb die-back to hide – that sort of thing. Your best bet is to sit down with a piece of graph paper and plot out the bed or border – at least the bigger, longer-lasting plants – and look at the height, color and texture combinations to see if you like them. Look at gardening magazines, go to the bookstore and browse through a few of those gardening books with pretty pictures, see what they’ve done and figure out what you like. If the books tell you not to combine red and yellow and you love red and yellow together – go for it. If you look around, you’ll notice Mother Nature doesn’t worry about “grouping” colors and somehow it always looks glorious when she puts on a show, yes?

I’ll continue this discussion in a future post.

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.

The recipe for perfect soil is an easy one – one- third dirt, one -third sharp sand, one-third compost. Would that all recipes were this easy.

If you have decided that your dirt is so awful you can’t use it, you can probably find a local company that will deliver the above mix. You will need to know how many cubic yards you want, so measure your space, decide how deep you want your new bed to be and do your multiplication – length X width X depth ( make sure all measurements are converted to feet); then, since there are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard, divide your result by 27 and presto! – the number of cubic yards you need. And, ps, the depth of your bed, if it will be planted with perennials (plants that come back every year or live for years) or vegetables, should be at least 12 inches. If it’s a bed for annuals, you can get by with 8 or 10 inches since the plants won’t last for more than a season.

Fixing It

If you decide to amend your next step will depend upon what type of soil you already have. If it’s acid, add lime (calcium carbonate ) –  following  the test lab’s recommendations; if it’s alkaline, add sulfur, again to the lab’s specifications or those of your county extension service.  If  it’s sandy you’ll need to add compost and dirt. If its clay you’ll need to lighten it up with sharp sand and lots and lots of compost. ie., organic material.  You can buy compost or make your own – but when you go to buy it you will often find it marked as mulch. Not all mulches are compost but all compost can be mulch. If you’re confused about the terminology its simple – if its going on top of the ground, its mulch; if its going into the ground, its compost. Unless you’re top dressing with compost.

Mulch is meant to go on top of the soil to conserve moisture, prevent weeds from sprouting and, in cold climates, to insulate the ground in winter.  It will also help to keep the roots cool in hot weather. Mulch can be plastic (yuck), straw, grass clippings, bark, chopped leaves, gravel, newspapers – any number of things. Please avoid the cocoa mulch sold at some garden centers, as it is extremely attractive to dogs and can kill them.  Mulch composed of organic matter is best. Compost is meant to be a soil additive that will improve the quality and texture of the soil.  The condition of your soil, especially if you plan to garden organically, is critical – it isn’t just a growing medium, it’s a living organism. It is full of microorganisms and nutrients that must be constantly replenished and nourished. Since you won’t be using chemical sprays or fertilizers (I hope), you must see to the health of your soil. Chemicals are a quick fix but not a good long term solution any more than you taking carb blockers so you can live on fries instead of eating a healthy diet is a good idea. Chemicals actually impact the soil in unfortunate ways – they kill microorganisms, discourage good things like earth worms, leave mineral salts behind and kill beneficial insects as well as bad bugs. Using them means your dirt won’t be alive. It will just – well, lie there. Think of your soil as a partner in your garden and you’ll both be better off.

Ok, assuming you’ve found your soil type and texture the last thing to check is drainage. Poor drainage can kill plants very quickly so it’s important to know if you have a problem. Dig a hole about two feet deep in your chosen plot and fill it with water; after it drains refill it. Check back in about an hour – if there’s still water in the hole, you have a drainage problem.  That means you will have to amend your soil to a deeper level or use raised beds, which we will cover later in the post. Poor drainage is usually caused by hardpan – a thin to thick layer under the top soil that is virtually impermeable. It can occur naturally, as it does in my area of the southwest, where it’s called caliche, or because builders have put down a layer of soil and driven heavy equipment over it while working on the site. If the hardpan is thin you might be able to have the area plowed or break through it with an augur in the spots you want to plant; you will need to work in lots of organic material to improve it but it can be done. If it’s thick, as it can be here – we sometimes have to use a tool called a sharpshooter – you would probably have to hire a contractor to install a subsurface drainage system. In that case, raised beds would be both easier and cheaper unless you’re planting acreage.

In my next post I will discuss the two ways to start off – the hard way and the easy way. The hard way entails a process called double digging or double trenching, and will probably drastically improve your relationship with your chiropractor and dramatically increase his profits; the easy way entails the use of raised beds or sunken beds, and while it can be more expensive, if you count what you’ll save on the back doctor, maybe not so much.

LARGE TOOLS

You will, of course, need something for digging.  A shovel is necessary, a fork can be a lifesaver if you can afford one. A spade is not critical, but nice to have as well. The difference between a shovel and a spade is the shape – a shovel is rounded at the bottom, a spade is square. Unless it’s a poacher’s spade, in which case it’s narrow and round. And don’t ask me why it’s called a poachers spade – that’s a British thing. Shovels weren’t even available in the UK until fairly recently.

If you have hard soil, an English garden fork can be a lifesaver. Its much easier for a small or weaker person to drive into the ground (and get back out), it helps break up the soil and its easier to manipulate. It won’t take the place of a shovel for some chores but it can save your back.

HAND TOOLS

 You will need hand pruners for snipping, trimming, deadheading and like chores. Pruners come in two types – bypass and anvil. In bypass pruners, the blades cross each other and cut; with anvil pruners, one blade comes down on top of the other. I prefer bypass pruners and I got mine from a catalog called Women’s Work – they’re Japanese made, all metal, incredibly sharp and keep their edge forever. They’re not as comfortable in the hand since they have no plastic padding on the handles and you can seriously stab yourself if you aren’t careful – and I have – but they’ve been my favorites for years.

Loppers are basically long-handled pruners with curved blades. They are needed for cutting larger stems, thinning out and bigger pruning jobs.

You’ll need a trowel but you don’t have to get one in every size. If you plan to plant a lot of bulbs and bedding plants, get a  dibble , or even better, a bulb-planter- it will save you major time.  A dibble is an iron pointed tool with a cross handle; a bulb planter is a circular tool with a handle that, when plunged into the ground, grabs and removes a plug of dirt leaving you with a nice round hold to put stuff in.

One of my all time favorite tools is a Japanese farmer’s weeder. It looks scary – like a giant Bowie knife with serrated edges on one side. It isn’t as sharp as a knife but it will dig furrows, pry up weeds and small rocks, dig a planting hole, scrape mulch to one side, mash a slug and clean your nails. All this presumes you’re on the other end operating it, of course. And if you have gardens in two different parts of the country don’t try to take it through airport security. I did. They finally turned me loose, though.

Next post we’ll talk about hoes in all their myriad shapes and sizes and functions.

Soil pH simply means the range of acidity to alkalinity of your dirt. If you don’t know your soil type, you can buy a test kit and find out. Or you can try calling your county extension service – they can be a wonderful resource for many things agricultural – and ask them for help. Most plants prefer a fairly neutral soil, so on a large scale you would want a pH of around 7.

SOIL AMENDMENT

Soils can be amended and most will need to be. But trying to change an alkaline soil into an acid one, for instance, would, on a large scale, be a major job and would require constant labor. If you have alkaline soil and want to grow acid loving plants, I suggest you confine them to one small bed or containers. And if your water is alkaline as well, you’ll be fighting a losing battle unless you’re willing to water your plants with  bottled water.

Soil amendment is usually confined to texture. Perfect garden loam rarely exists in home gardens. Most soil is too sandy, is clay, is too rocky or too compacted. With soil, after pH, texture and type are everything.

SOIL TEXTURE

The texture of a soil determines its viablility as a growing medium and there are three basic types – clay, sand and loam. Head out to an existing area where you want to plant and water it. Twenty-four hours later go back and pick up a handful of your dirt and squeeze it. If it clumps together in a sticky ball you have clay soil. If it crumbles you have sandy soil. If it is a bit crumbly but sticks together loosely – congratulations, you have loam, the perfect gardening soil.

In my next post I will discuss what to do to fix your soil, and most of you will need to fix it.  So sorry. Just remember, if you get it right the first time you’ll avoid spending hours and hours for years and years trying to compensate for bad dirt.

So do a little homework before you dig in – ha – and save yourself some grief. Test your soil for pH, structure and type. Know your maximum high and low temperatures. Try to decide what kind of gardener you want to be – a weekend gardener who spends time doing basic maintenance on Saturday and Sunday,  a more hands-on gardener who actually enjoys the process or a full blown gardening maniac. Many people who start out as weekend warriors are soon converted to the manic stage, so be warned. If you aren’t sure, and you probably aren’t, don’t give yourself too much work to begin with – ease into gardening by starting with one flower bed or border or one small vegetable plot. By the time that project is in place, you’ll undoubtedly know how much you can do and how much you want to do.