Vegetable Gardening Soil Preparation

When starting your garden you have three choices for vegetable gardening soil preparation.

The first is if you are in a large area, then there may be enough soil available to scoop up and fill your raised garden bed.

Living in Leakey we had plenty of soil available to make raised beds, however, our raised beds consisted of a soil bank only. When it rained, we lost a lot of this soil bank.

If you do not have soil then you will have to import your own. There are two options available here:

One is you can find out who your local supplier of soil is and have them deliver the materials you need in one of their trucks.

If your garden is in the back yard, chances are they will not be able to get the material where you need them so you will have to get a wheel barrow and truck it to the garden area.

The first thing we need to do is figure out how much soil we need for soil preparation. When calculating and talking to your garden supplier, when they say “yard” they are talking about a cubic yard.

To figure out the cubic yards use this formula: length in feet * length in width * depth in inches, divided by 324.

My new area, show below, is about 40 feet long by 2 feet wide by 12 inches deep.

I will want to put in about ten inches of soil for my vegetable gardening soil preparation. This would be (40*2*10)/324 = 2.4691 cubic yards.

I would want to order three cubic yards of garden soil in my vegetable gardening soil preparation . My local supplier offers a garden mix for $34 a yard—this would be $102.

But I want to mix a yard of compost in with my soil. I would subtract one yard of the soil and add in one yard of compost at $34 a yard. My price for the soil and compost is $102.00.

The delivery charge for where I am is $55 for a 13 yard truck. For this company, their trucks are multi-compartmentalized so they can bring more than one material in a truck. I can get my soil, compost and mulch in the same truck.

If you have a pickup truck you save on delivery fees, maybe. You might have to make three trips and depending on where you are located it may not be worth it. Plus you will have to immediately unload your truck. But if you do go this route, remember to bring a tarp that completely covers the load.

This is a law in most cities. You do not want any of your money blowing away. Plus you do not want something to fly off your truck and hit someone else. Then you may be faced with a fine and/or repair bill.

Another consideration here is if you live in a housing development that has a homeowners association, there may be rules concerning how much and how long you have to move anything you put on the front lawn. You may also have to get the permission of the homeowners association to put in a garden. These are a couple of things to keep in mind in your vegetable gardening soil preparation.

The other option for vegetable gardening soil preparation is to go to the local hardware store and buy the materials you want by the bag. This will require several trips to the store but would probably be much easier to move. And doing it by the bag allows you to work at your own pace. I think the price comes out to about the same.

My new area for vegetable gardening soil preparation is 480 inches long by 24 inches wide and 10 inches deep = 67 CF. My local hardware store sells top soil for about $1.25 per bag. The bag covers about 1 CF. My cost is about $84 for the soil. Compost is the same price. I will be putting in part soil and part compost.

The hardware store will have several types of top soil for vegetable garden soil preparation available, from generic type stuff to brand name such as Scotts and Miracle Grow. Scotts and Miracle grow offer top soil with fertilizer and weed killer.

You will want to stay away from these. Different types of vegetables require different types of soil conditions.

Now that your vegetable gardening soil preparation is completed you will want to do two things: add earth worms and cover it with a layer of mulch. Keep in mind that we are preparing for the spring planting. We will not plant seeds until it warms up or we build a green house we can heat.

In the picture below, I am using a pick to break up the soil in my original garden area. Since I have been gone for five years there was no up keep to the garden so it has become impacted.

However, it is not too hard to break up. Once I have broken it up with the pick I have an electric tiller I bought from Home Depot for $99. I have never used it. I am hoping it will break up the soil more than just using the pick.

I ordered some worms yesterday for my vegetable gardening soil preparation so I need to get the soil broken up and ready for them. But today it is raining. The weatherman has been predicting rain for weeks, but none never came, but finally he got it right.

Sometimes I wish they would give us the opposite report of what the computer model states and maybe we would get the rain more often. And have you ever noticed weather people calling rain "bad weather" in a drought prone area.

Maybe that is why it is a drought prone area. Maybe when it rains we should call it "good weather" and just maybe the good Lord would provide the drought areas with more of the "good weather."

So much for the preaching.

In the pictures below I am breaking up my soil with a pick. If you are doing soil banks or putting your garden straight into the ground without using raised beds, then you will have to do some heavy duty picking or rent a tractor to have it tilled.

I have broken new ground several times with several types of tillers and they do not break up the hard ground that has never been tilled before. I had to find someone with a tractor to do this.

Once I have this broken up I will add some compost and soil to it, then top it off with a couple of inches of mulch to keep it moist and soft for the worms and for planting time.

Thank you for visiting this site.

Go to Home Page from Vegetable Gardening Soil Preparation.