Building a Garden

This hot weather has got me in the mood to do some gardening. It is still probably alittle to early to put all of your plants outside but if your anything like me your garden needs plenty of prep work anyway. So thats what I did this weekend got my garden in working order. The first thing I had to do was get rid of all the dead plant material left over from last year. This went directly into the compost. The next step was to get rid of all the weeds, which have basically taken over my garden. This is weird but for some reason I find pulling weed relaxing and stress relieving. Weeds can actually go right in to the compost too. I was worried they would just take over that but the heat created in the composting process kills everything. Now that I had a weed free garden I wanted to make some garden paths through it so that it would be easier to collect the fruits and vegetables and continue to pull weeds through out the summer. Atrick I just learned in my food crop class at Temple was to use old news paper to make the paths. All you have to do is lay the paper down atleast a few sheets thick and than pour some wood chips on top and you will be guaranteed a weed free path, plus by the time the next season comes around the path will have fully decomposed into the soil allowing you to rearrange new paths anyway you would like. This is an excellent way of getting rid of old news paper and seems like the ultimate recycling as the paper is turned right back into nutrients for future plants. Now that your garden is ready you can start planting certain plants such as lettuce and broccoli. For other plants you should check their labels as I'm not a 100% sure. I know it seems weird after the temp has reached 90 but their is still a chance for a late frost. You can use milk cartoons to make mini green houses too that will better the chance of any plant living outdoors.