How to: Create a new garden NOW (without tilling)
This post is for those of you who are looking for a straightforward and clear instruction on how you can create a new garden plot for this upcoming growing season! This needs to be done in the next week or so to have success by last frost here in Ohio (Zone 5b).
What you’ll need:
Enough cardboard to cover the grass in your new plot. No sheen, the plastic layer on shiny cardboard boxes won’t break down very well so it must be matte!
Enough mulch OR compost to cover your cardboard, 2-4 inches should be fine.
Now that you have your supplies:
Lay the cardboard out where you want your plot.
Soak it down really well.
Next add your mulch.
Soak that down too, for good measure.
Keep that area wet until your last frost, don’t let it dry out.
After last frost (Here in Ohio that’s usually mid-may) you should be able to dig right into your mulch and cardboard and plant. The cardboard will break down completely overtime. In the mean time, it will act as a weed barrier and kill the weed seeds underneath.
Our first cut flower garden: fishing line, chicken wire, and down trees from the woods! It worked, but NEVER have this much bare soil! Weeds galore!
It can actually be this simple! No budgeting for a tiller necessary. All you need to buy is your mulch, and you were probably going to buy that anyway. Tilling also brings up weed seeds so it’s nice when we can avoid it. Here we usually will till up a new plot simply because our plots are fairly large and we like to incorporate as much compost into that first soil layer as we can. Our soil is fairly clay and a bit rocky. After the first year, we no longer till the plot.
If you’re thinking your soil is too clay and rocky for this method, I would encourage you to try it. Clay soil is actually packed with minerals plants need, so long as your break it up well when you plant it should be fine. I would also recommend going with compost instead of mulch (or in addition to) as these nutrients will incorporate into your soil and encourage worms, who will loosen your soil over time.