ClematisImage by Product of Newfoundland via Flickr

If you have been follow our gardening blog you know we are learning how to be gardeners and that last year we planted about a month later than we should have. We still had fun and learned. We also, even though we started late, had some great produce and were very encouraged.

Last year was really our first year at gardening. The previous two years at this home we spent doing things that needed fixing up and only planted a few flowers and some tomatoes. We didn’t plan any garden in those two years but we had it in our minds.

I guess having it in your mind isn’t good enough we should have planned, at least for last year when we tried a few more things.

That’s called a learning experience so we have already started planning for our 2009 garden.

I thought that other newbie gardeners would like to have a plan so we are going to add a post for each step we do in our preparation planning and will link them here like a little table of contents.

Our Backyard Garden Plan For 2009

square foot gardening

Square Foot Gardening

We have decided to do square foot gardening with raised beds and all fresh soil. We decided to go with this method for a couple of reasons. Even though we are metric in New Brunswick, Canada I still think feet.

First, our soil is like clay that has been compacted and second, with raised beds I won’t have as much difficulty with my back. Poor ole me.

Testing Your Soil Before Planting or Seeding

It’s important to have the right PH balance for the plants you wish to grow in your flower garden or vegetable garden. If you’re not using raised beds using good soil you may want to test your soil so that you know what to add to it if it’s not the best soil.

I will link to a few places that will give you a better idea about testing your soil.

How many of us started gardening without the slightest idea about soil PH? Well I am in that group and really didn’t pay any attention to our soil’s PH balance until we found that some things grew well while others just seemed to struggle to stay alive.

I started looking online to find answers and here is what I found. Get a soil testing kit and test the soil where you are planting and compare that with the PH requirements for each plant as some like it acidic while others prefer more alkaline soil.

Soil Acidity, learn more about your PH balance between acidic soil and alkaline soil.

How to test your soil.

More to come as I write up more of our backyard garden plan for 2009 so bookmark this pages and return often.

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