How to Prepare a Raised Bed Garden

Patti Moreno: Hi, I’m Patti Moreno the garden girl.

William Moss: And I’m William Moss and today, we’re going to talk about prepare to seed bed. The first thing you want to do is have a good location with 68 hours of sunlight and we’ve got that.

Patti Moreno: Its March and I just can't wait to get out in the garden right when it turns spring and it gets a little bit warm enough to be outside without freezing and the best thing to do right now is to prepare that bed for planting.

William Moss: Exactly, so the first thing we want to do is to start clearing some of the debris just about from last year. I think this is the three sister’s bed if I’m correct.

Patti Moreno: Yes.

William Moss: Right, so we’ve got to clean some old cone styles and some of these leaves and we want to just pull out this garden debris now. All plant pegs, any of this stuff just sitting around the garden you don’t want in there at this point.

Patti Moreno: But we’re not going to let this go to waste them. We’re going to take anything that we’re pulling out right now and pop it immediately into our compost bag. We’re going to let it work for us. So I had corn, beans and squash in here—

William Moss: Okay.

Patti Moreno: And it’s really low and it’s so fun.

William Moss: And it’s just a great set up.

Patti Moreno: Now this soil has been compacting down all winter and what I love doing first is just taking a pitchfork and loosening the soil. Why make it difficult on ourselves? When we want to turn it, let’s loosen it up—

William Moss: Right.

Patti Moreno: So that we can easily put that shovel in and turn the soil, bring that soil from the bottom up to the top.

William Moss: What we’re doing here is we’re helping the soil stay nice and lose so it really be able to grow down and all throughout the soil.

Patti Moreno: I’ve got my pitchfork here too and I’m just digging it in and look at how leap the soil is so far.

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All right, so you’re going to keep turning, should I’d grab the shovel now?

William Moss: Sure. As a matter of fact I’m going to go over here and start shoveling in some of this little compost now.

Patti Moreno: All right.

William Moss: You love manure?

Patti Moreno: Yeah.

William Moss: Not this stuff.

Patti Moreno: I love using rabbit manure, obviously for me it’s free because I’ve got rabbit but you can basically apply it right away. You don’t have to let it compost because it’s not going to burn the roots of any of your plant on. It’s going to provide nutrients right away for them. Look at all those ones that we have in the compost. That is such a good sign that we’ve got some rich—nutrient rich compost. Those worms have been helping breakdown the rabbit manure. They live us rich one casting and that’s a great fertilizer too. So anyway you look at it, worms—if you see worms that means you’ve got good soil.

I think their pretty good here so far. What do you think?

William Moss: Yeah, this was great. I bet it’s just smoothed everything out and grate it.

Patti Moreno: All right.

William Moss: Now what we’re trying to do is just smooth out the top of the surface so that we can get to see the soil contact.

Patti Moreno: This is looking really good.

William Moss: Yeah, it looks great.

Patti Moreno: All right, I think we’re done. I think we’ve amended the soil. We’ve turn it so nice and fluffy and this bed is ready for seeding.

William Moss: I’m William Moss.

Patti Moreno: I’m Patti Moreno, The Garden Girl.

William Moss: And that’s how you prepare a seed bed.