Starting a Garden

Soil. It's where my father-in-law told me I needed to start when I asked him how to plant a vegetable garden in my backyard. A beautiful, vibrant, productive garden starts with the soil. Good soil will produce a good garden. Bad soil won't produce much of anything.

Before you dig up your grass, till the earth and plant your seeds, you need to get your soil tested and then call a nursery to figure out what amendments you need to make. Your local extension office is a good place to start. Every state has one. They are often located at a state's land grant university but can be right in the middle of the city too. Due to budget short cuts however, your extension office may have to refer you to a private business, like they did in my city, and you may have to pay a small fee to have your soil tested.

I live in Omaha, Neb. and paid $20 to Midwest Laboratories to have my soil tested. Then, I called Lanoha Nursery to buy what I needed to add to the soil in my backyard to make my garden grow. It turned out that my soil was like the rest of the soil in Douglas County, Neb. - high in clay and low in nitrates. So, they recommended a good fertilizer, a product containing nitrogen, and some top soil. Then, they delivered it all to my house.

It took extra time and labor to get my soil tested and amended but it was worth it. Year after year, I can tell a difference between the three above ground beds that I amended, and the one I didn't. The healthy peas below are in the garden beds I amended.

The corn and beans grew higher and produced more fruit in the good soil than the bad. If you are going to go to the effort of starting your own vegetable garden, make it worth your time by getting healthy, full plants and vegetables. You won't regret it. And, you'll learn more about what you're doing in the process.