One of the best positions you could find yourself in is having decided to start a garden from scratch, whether you have some semblance of the already existing one or starting with a totally clean slate. If you’ve started growing plants already, leave those to flourish. Otherwise, the best way to make preparations for a healthy garden is nourishing the soil for around a whole 12 months.
You might have to live with a particularly uninspiring space for that period, but the days will go by quickly enough. You’ll be grateful to yourself in the future for having endured this period of nourishment.
In today’s blog, we take a look at a few different areas, including what to do with the soil base and whether or not you should introduce teak outdoor furniture into the mix.
Prepare the soil base
Ensure there is adequate drainage to prevent any flooding should it rain heavily, to avoid the running off newly exposed topsoil. That can usually be achieved with sparsely scattered gravel, effective in the containment of the soil. However, at this point, it should appear as if somebody was deliberately trying to loosen the soil to perhaps complete the job of digging up a foundation.
Whenever there’s some organic waste coming out of your kitchen, remove the seeds along with any offshoots that may otherwise grow. Scatter all that organic waste material all over the ground. Leaves blown into the mix are fine as well, along with animal waste and any organic compost that you might want to add at your discretion.
What to do with existing plants
You can even proceed to replant them elsewhere if you so wish and if you are cleared to do so, or you can give them away, as surely nobody would mind taking up possession of a plant that has already started to grow well. It probably wouldn’t make any sense to try and uproot the larger and older trees though, but you can indeed get some good money for fully-grown trees.
If for example, a palm has somehow managed to thrive, you can get some seriously good money for it. If you need the motivation to try and rid yourself of the bigger, more established of the oldest trees you have, try and gauge how much you might get for them. You could also think of it as just part of the process of a fresh start. You can proceed to start purchasing the teak outdoor furniture you wish to make part of your backyard at this point already and perhaps plan the garden around those pieces.
This step of doing away with existing plants would naturally be implemented in conjunction with preparing the fertile soil base, but naturally, you would have made plans for this step before you get going with the first one.
Gradually reintroduce the dug-up soil
As time ticks by, gradually reintroduce the dug-up soil up to even out the depth of the ground. Take extra care to mix it with compost-like matter that has already been prepared intricately, like some of the organic compost. Old tea bags work wonders too, with the tea leaves to be removed from the bag and mixed in with the dug-up soil that you’d be gradually reintroducing.
It should take about a year to reintroduce the soil this way, but if there is to be any watering, let it come from a natural source like rain.
Add seating
Now that the soil improvement is complete and the plants are all bedded in and growing nicely, you can start to think about enjoying all of your hard work. Visit the Hardware Store to check out a few seating or decorative additions to your garden area, Add a patio or deck to a dead space near the house and introduce a table and chairs so that you can sit and enjoy nature. You could even add benches, ottomans, cushions and throws, but remember to store it all away safely for the winter to prevent damage. Some of the largest deck boxes available can hold all of your garden furniture, so you don’t have to worry about finding space to store outdoor tables and chairs in the house or shed.
And voila! You now have a garden you can be proud of, and maybe even entertain family and friends in! As the years go by, your garden will evolve and plants will grow and die, so it’s an ongoing project that you may never finish completely, but at least you’ve got some amazing soil now!