Basic Gardening Tips : How to Create Good Growing Soil

All right once you have turned over all of the sod in your garden, what you would want to do is come in and break off most of this dirt. Some people I know will put this back in the bottom. But I don't like to because I am afraid I am going to just regrow the weeds or the grass that was there, so I will put this in my compost pile. But now that we are here, you can see we've got some dirt here but in order to make good growing soil and a good growing bed for your garden, you've got to get down a good 12 to 18 inches. So what you are going to do is what you call double digging. You are going to dig this hole, you are going to take all of the dirt out of it, you are going to put the dirt to the side or in front of it and you are going to do this all the way down the length of the bed that you've decided to create. Then the best thing to do is come in with some good organic material. This is our own compost that we make. You can see we've got a few roots left in it that we make out of our own weeds, plants, whatever we have on hand as composted. I put a good amount of this in it. This bed is going to be up above ground level by the time that I get it finished. There is no reason for it to be sunk down into the ground. Once I put that compost in, I can come back and mix back in my dirt and then, with my fork I would mix this up. By the time I get finished, I will have a nice mounded bed of really good draining quality soil that has a high organic content in it, draining being the operative word. If you can pick up the dirt out of your hole that you've dug and squeeze it and it stays complete, this is not too hard. This is fine. If it just stays like a big lump, like a lump of clay, then you want to put some sand in it as well as organic matter because it will not drain. This crumbles. You want it to be crumbly. It should be moist and crumbly. If it is too dry, put in some peat and then peat moss, organic material, good dirt and you are ready to go.