My First Attempt At Vegetable Gardening

[roger33]

Hi all. I'm new here after deciding to start a vegetable garden(my first) next spring. I have some questions about garden preparation. I have a 10x20 area that I am going to have tilled this week that is covered in Bermuda grass. After it's tilled should I cover it with plastic or cloth or leave it open? I plan on getting the soil tested then adding whatever is needed in early spring with a mini tiller. Am I going about this the right way or are there better ways to do it? I plan on planting some basic items like tomatoes, okra, basil, cucumbers, beans, and peas. I'm open to any and all advice.

[kgall]

I would add some compost to it when you till it. It's never too early to start enriching the soil!

[Diane]

Welcome Roger.
I usually rake then fork the top 4 or so inches where I already grew veggies.
This is for clean up. Then as kgall said put down compost and rake it in. If I need more soil, and I usually do, I mix it in.
Some people do a lot more but this works for me.

[rainbowgardener]

Well especially there in OK where I assume you have a long time left til frost, after you till your Bermuda grass, a whole bunch of weeds including more grass are going to come up unless you do something. Couple of choices would be to till it again just before frost, which would get rid of the weeds that came up and then let the frost kill the next set. Or cover the soil. You could use clear plastic, to solarize it... heat up the soil enough to kill remaining weed seeds. Or you could cover it with something like a thick layer of newspaper, that will smother the seeds, but eventually break down. That's called sheet mulching. Type that into the search box in upper left of most pages and find a lot of info about it.

[roger33]

Thanks for the tips everybody. At least now I have SOME idea of what to do next. Any other suggestions are still welcome.

[kgall]

Keep an eye on this forum. I have found that the answers to my questions lie in the minds of other gardeners! You can get lots of suggestions and advice here. It's been a huge help to me!

[soil]

I second the soil solarization if your in a hot enough climate and have a few weeks of hot weather left. you might want to re introduce some beneficial soil life via a healthy compost tea once the soil is solarized. add amendments before solarization, so you don't have to till( and bring up dormant weed seeds) and your soil is ready for planting.