Preparing the Ground

Cleaning and Preparing the Ground

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When faced with a new or neglected piece of ground, there is a strong temptation to go at it as fast as one can to get it planted and in production. This can spell disaster since the ground is bound to be full of weeds. Time spent during the first season cleaning and thoroughly preparing the soil will certainly bear dividends in the long term. Although this is true for both vegetable and flower borders, it is the flower borders that need particular attention, since once planted you may not want to disturb them for many years. Vegetables are dug over every year, giving you opportunities to discover and dig out weeds missed earlier.
There is no better way of preparing the ground than by hand digging it over and then hand weeding to remove all the perennial weeds as you go.
Once the ground has been dug it can be left to allow annual weeds to germinate. These can be hoed off at regular intervals. However, many gardeners would find that leaving the ground fallow is a waste of a valuable natural resource. There are certain crops which are ideal to grow in weedy ground that has recently been dug up. Potatoes and brassicas (vegetables in the cabbage family), are two such crops that are regularly used by gardeners in such situations.
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They both have advantages above and below ground. Below ground, the extensive and, in the case of the cabbages, deep and strong roots help break up the new ground. The deeper rooted they are, the better. Another advantage with cabbages is that it is easy to hoe right up to the plants, something which it is difficult to do with, for example, a row of carrots. Any’ weeds can be removed and the ground kept in good condition, encouraging other weed seeds to grow so that by the end of the season the number of seeds waiting to germinate in the soil has been drastically diminished. Growing potatoes is beneficial in a similar way, except here the soil is kept disturbed as the rows are earthed up. The large amount of foliage also helps kill off struggling weeds.
There are other plants with strong tap roots which help to break up the lower levels of the soil and bring nutrients up to the surface where they can be more readily used by the next season’s crops.

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