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Think Spring *Make your beds: Local gardeners have their favorite ways of building new garden beds. Most require several months or a season to mature, but if you start now, you can plant in June. *Don't rake: Several years ago my friend Ellen Cantor got leaves from Eugene's autumn leaf collection program. All winter, leaf layers two feet deep blanketed her grassy front yard and parking strip. By spring, the grass died and the leaves settled. Ellen dug hollows in the leaf mulch, added compost to the holes, and planted seedlings. They flourished! By now, the leaf blankets are mounded beds of loose soil. If you have old leaves from fall, you can build beds like these now. *Cover Crops: Starting a garden in heavy soil on Spencer Creek Road, landscaper Linda Guadagni takes it slow and easy by planting crimson clover in winter or buckwheat in summer. She cuts her cover crops and tills them under, then adds Steer Plus and river loam to beds before she plants. *Weed Defense: I'm building garden beds in a hilltop meadow of grass and intimidating perennial weeds, with access to few leaves. So I begin with 6 inches of sheet compost: annual weeds, grass, and produce scraps, partly or entirely decomposed. On top of that goes a layer of newspaper, at least 7 sheets thick: only sheets with little or no color, because color can add harmful chemicals to the soil. The uppermost layer is several inches of "Garden Compost," composted yard clippings from Lane Forest Products. (If I had leaves, I would use them instead.) Several months from now, when the grass dies and the bottom layer of sheet compost has decomposed, I will plant down inside it, adding organic fertilizers 4 kelp, colloidal phosphate, and composted chicken manure from Down to Earth 4 to planting holes. *Vermicompost Beds: At Grassroots Garden, Jen Anonia likes vermicompost beds. Dig weeds out of the soil and then add: 1-inch layer of produce scraps or healthy plant materials 1 inch of leaves, preferably ground up 1/2 4 1 inch of compost or composted manure Repeat once or twice, building up the bed. Wait several months and plant. Jen says worms and helpful microorganisms appear and transform even difficult clay soils from the top down. I like the sound of this 4 like a garden torte. With many of these methods, you can plant beds in June. But if you can't wait, here are two for eager gardeners with strong shoulders. With both, you must dig weeds out of the soil first. *Double-digging: Several gardeners swear by this. Dig a narrow trench the depth of a spade, and move the soil aside. Wiggle a spading fork in the bottom of the trench to loosen the subsoil and add 4 or 5 inches of grass, annual weeds, and compost. Dig another trench beside the first one, and fill the first trench with soil from the second. Keep going until you finish the bed. It's time-consuming, but advocates swear by the tilth of the resulting soil. And hey, double-digging is aerobic! *Kate's Labor-Intensive: Turn the soil once, breaking up clumps. Turn it when it is moist, not wet. Working with wet soil, especially clay soil, will compact it, but since this has been a dry winter, many gardens are less soggy than usual. Add a 1 to 2-inch layer of garden compost, a thick sprinkling of composted chicken manure, a thin sprinkling of collodial phosphate (rich mud), a little kelp, and several inches of old leaves if you have them. Turn the soil again, digging all of this in. Plant in a week or two.
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