Preparing veg beds for sowing and planting

Struggling with weeds in your veg plot?

Having covered some of my veg plots with cardboard to reduce weed growth over winter, I now have two options, either cover the cardboard with a mulch of old compost from my veg and flower boxes or remove the cardboard and compost it and prepare the ground for sowing or planting. 

Ground preparation for sowing and planting

Whatever you are sowing or planting out ensure that you dig out any perennial weeds that are in the wrong place including their roots. Weeds such as dandelions, thistles and nettles, scutch and other grasses, buttercups, herb robert. Many of these are perennials with either deep tap roots or roots that creep under the surface and re-emerge as a new offshoot of the parent plant. This makes them difficult to get rid of if they are in the wrong place. As these plants establish they will not only be harder to root out but will also be taking valuable water and nutrients from the soil which you want for your vegetables or flowers. It is important to try and get as much of the root system out of the ground as many of these will reroot from roots left in the soil so taking them out when young will make weeding easier in the future. 

If a plant is well established then dig out as much as possible to reduce the plant’s vigour and then if/when it does shoot again either digging out again or hoeing the top off regularly will further weaken the plant.

Hidden within the soil will be many annual weed seeds as well as some perennial seeds. Weeding any short lived annuals such as bittercress and groundsel, which self seed very readily, will make future weeding easier.  Many annual seedlings can be easily hoed and left on the surface of the soil to dry out. 

Sowing

Prepare the ground by raking over the area for sowing to a fine tilth. Smaller seeds need a finer soil crumb structure to allow their roots to make contact with the soil and the moisture needed to germinate as well as moisture for the roots to establish due to the lack of energy reserves in the seed. 

Larger seeds are a bit more forgiving as their roots are often stronger and they have seed reserves to give them energy while they establish their root systems.

Following sowing label the area and water in with a fine rose on the watering can so the seeds are not washed away.

Planting out

If you are planting out then the soil does not need to be raked over unless the top surface has been compacted either by heavy rain or being walked on. Rake or fork lightly to loosen the compaction and then either dig a small hole for planting out established plants.