Preparing, preparing, preparing

During the fall and winter, the space of my would-be garden was covered in leaves.  See, this is a good thing.  As the layer of leaves breaks down, nutrients (ah nutrients) are recycled into the soil, making it nice and organically rich.  Plus, it provides a nice warm toasty winter site with lots of food to tons of little beneficial critters. 

Sometime in towards the end of February, on one sunny slightly warm (as in 55 degrees warm) day, because I was DESPERATE to get outside, I raked the leaves away from the bed.  After another couple of cold weeks, it was finally March and no longer 40 degrees during the day.  That's this week, by the way. 

The first thing that really needed done in the space was to remove all the overwintering weeds.  It's important to get all of the weed removed, i.e. not just the top green part but the roots too.  Otherwise the little suckers will just pop back up, it's their life strategy (see the R-strategy (aka ruderal) proposed by Grime 1977).  They're survivors.  Anyway, the easiest way to do this is to use a spade and dig up the weed from underneath, removing the roots, while simultaneously pulling from the top. 

Unfortunately, several of our 'weeds' are little clonals.  This means that instead of growing by seed (i.e. sexual reproduction), these clones will send out an underground stem (also called a rhizome or runner) from which a genetically identical plant will grow (also called a ramet), i.e. asexual reproduction.  Much more of a PITA (pain in the ass) to remove, so I tried my best, got frustrated, and figured I'd pick them out later when I turned over the soil.

Which leads me to turning over the soil,which is the next step.  The seeds need soil somewhat losse soil for their tiny little baby roots (also called radicle) and tiny little baby stems (or hypocotyle) need to grow through. I tried to do this first with a hoe (if you have a larger garden space, may I suggest NOT using a hoe, but perhaps renting / buying a roto-tiller) to no avail.  Since I have such a small space, I simply used a shovel to turn over the soil and then used the hoe to break it up.  My sig. other, M., redid the brickwork surrounding our garden space and removed some unwanted shrubs.  And viola! The garden was ready for seeding!  (Pictures to come, once again it's raining outside).

During my soil-turning endeavor, I found that our garden spot was a haven for grubs.  More specific, these cicada grubs (courtesy of D. Pugh's website, http://www.dpughphoto.com/index.htm -- check it out, pretty awesome nature photos):

And, being the bleeding heart nature loving person I am, I re-buried them.