Preparing your new garden from lawn or bare ground

If you are lucky enough to have enough space to be able to dig up some lawn to create a garden, choose a place that gets plenty of sun, preferably all the year round, because vegetables grow best in full sun.

Vegetable garden beds are easiest to manage if they are square or oblong in shape and no more than 1 metre wide.  An oblong bed can be 1 metre wide and up to 2 metres or more long depending on how much space you have.

When you have decided on the best place, measure the area you want to use and mark it out with string tied to pegs in each corner.

With your spade cut right around the area, then start to dig inside the string. Try to dig at least the depth of the spade (or 20-30 cm) so that you break up enough of the earth to allow your plants to put roots down without hitting hard un-dug ground.

In the winter, make sure the ground is not too wet and soggy In this situation, your digging will upset the structure of the soil and the resultts of your planting will be disappointing, even if you add ltos of soil nutrients.

Break up the soil with the spade or fork, or even the hoe then rake over the soil to level it out.  You can remove the clumps of lawn or just break them up, dig them in and let the old lawn rot down over time.

The soil is unlikely to have enough nutrients for plants so you will need to add plant food in the form of organic compost, chicken manure or pellets of sheep manure (smelly but easy to apply and great for your plants).

Other nutrients include blood and bone, superphosphate, dolomite lime or general garden fertiliser.

If you want to garden organically, you will need to check the contents of bags of general garden fertiliser.  It will be best to ask at your garden centre when you go to buy your fertiliser.

Now you are ready to start planting.