Getting Dirty!

My favorite part of spring is when I get to go out to the garden and start working the soil. I don't wear gloves unless I'm pulling weeds, but for just mixing soil and getting it ready to plant, I enjoy feeling the dirt. I notice one benefit of this is that my fingernails seem to really thrive on soil. It's true. After a few days of glove free digging in the dirt, my nails look amazing! They grow quickly and they're healthier than they are in the winter when I'm stuck inside so much with no dirt to play in.

Gardening in raised beds requires some attention to soil health and composition. Here in Kentucky we have very thick heavy clay soil that gets very hard when it's dry or very slick when it's wet. I don't like either of those and most garden plants don't either. So, over the last few years we've been amending the soil with top soil and compost. We purchased a compost tumbler a couple years ago and it works great as long as we pay attention to it and keep it tumbled regularly. Production slows down in the winter because it gets so cold but we still turn out a couple of loads even at that.

The top soil we used has a lot of sand in it and that has helped break up the clay a bit to make it more workable. I like to leave some clay in because it retains a lot of moisture but it still needs to be workable. We also get tons of earth worms up in the tires and they do a great job of keeping things 'tilled' up.

So, the way we do it is to dig out  a couple shovels full of soil in each tire and dump in a couple shovels full of compost and mix it all together with the remaining soil in the tires. The plants seem to do very well when we make sure to keep the soil fresh for them. If they ever look like they need an extra boost or for the heavy feeders, I apply liquid fish emulsion a couple of times over the season and they really love that stuff.

What is your spring time routine to get your garden ready to plant? What kind of fertilizer do you use? What benefits do you see in yourself that come as a result of gardening? What's your favorite part about having a garden?