preping soil for new vegetable garden next year

lin'sgraden · Wed Jul 15, 2009 8:41 pm

Hi All,

Thanks for a great welcome! I'm pretty new to vegetable gardening, and I want to put in a vege garden in next spring. Our soil is pretty sandy and very ROCKY.We live just north of Stanwood WA. We are thinking of planting, pumpkins, corn, lettuce, peppers, peas, onions and garlic. Any and all advice will be welcome. Lin

rainbowgardener · Thu Jul 16, 2009 7:35 am

Best thing you can do for sandy soil is add lots of organic materials and compost. Start your compost pile now (if you haven't already). In the fall I mulch everything with lots of fall leaves and then crunch them up a little and trowel them under in the spring. Sandy soil with lots of organic material added = nice loose well draining loam, the best.

ROCKY is a little harder, you can spend a lot of time pulling rocks out for years, they seem to sprout new in the soil every year. Or for small areas you can frame up raised beds and dump good enriched topsoil on top and then it won't matter that there are rocks in the underneath area.

lin'sgraden · Thu Jul 16, 2009 8:57 am

Thanks for the info.
If we do a raised garden area, how deep do we need the beds? Our vege garden area is about 12' x 70', with sun exposure all day long (well as much as we get up in the NW). Oh, so with sandy soil, you add organic material. So what is the sandy soil lacking for a good garden? I have started the compost, but what kind of fertilizer if any would I purchase?

splat42069 · Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:32 am

For fertilizer I use MG all purpose for vegging, then switch to MG tomato plant food, its got a higher P-K for fruiting.

Its just what works best for me. Pretty much you hafta play with it each year til you find something that works. Gardening is a new learning experience each year.

Good luck man

Gary350 · Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:51 pm

How much land do you have?

How large will your garden be?

If it will be a large garden then you may have to find a large supply of organic material. It has been many years since I have been in your geographic area but I remember seeing saw mills with large piles of saw dust many years ago. If you can find a 10 year old pile of saw dust that would work good for compost. Cow and horse manure is good. Several bags of peat moss from Home Depot or Lowes will work great.

rainbowgardener · Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:40 pm

What sandy soil lacks is the organic material, which helps it hold water. By itself, sandy soil drains water right out. The water going through it fast means that nutrients can tend to leach out with the water, so it can also be lower in nutrients, less fertile.

Your raised beds being on top of soil, just need to be about 6" deep.

Read some of Helpful Gardener's posts (on p. 3 of this topic is a good one, but there's lots of others: https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14039&start=30). If you add compost and composted manure, you shouldn't need to add any artificial fertilizer. If your soil isn't rich enough along with the above you can use fish emulsion, blood and/or bone meal, kelp, etc.

lin'sgraden · Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:41 pm

Thanks for ALL of the input my husband and I have recveived. It's help us a lot. We have 1/2 + acres of land, with great southern exposure. Our vege garden is going into the back yard along the fence, this way we can fence the other side of the garden area as well to keep the dogs out (about 12' x 60-70'). I'm thinking that it might be easier to do the raised beds, both soil and back wise.