Create a new garden - Continued

While you are digging through the soil digging up all the long roots of the bushes, trees or shrubs that you are pulling out of the way, be sure to get in there and get rid of any rocks that are going to be in the way while you are gardening. We all know how rocks can find their way to the top of our gardens no matter how deep they are planted so taking as many out as you can now will help you out in the long run.

Now that you have many of the roots, and rocks out of the way you most likely are still left with patches of grass or weeds in the area that you will be gardening. Taking a round pointed shovel and attacking these patches of weeds, just like lifting sod, you will find that you can easily dispose of these patches so you are then left with an area that is soil – with no weeds, rocks and no roots from bushes, weeds, and trees. 

One of the first things that you should do while you have all this soil open is to test the soil.  You can find a home soil testing kit in just about any home center where you purchase your gardening supplies. Testing the soil for any lack of or over abundance of any certain nutrient will allow you to ‘fix’ the soil before you start planting anything. If the soil is low in lime but high in magnesium, you might have the perfect plant for this position, but if you don’t, balancing the soil by adding what the test kit says you are lacking will give you many more options in what to plant in this garden.