tilling ... will he kill the grass in advance ... add the manure.. and then till it all in??

is your light stand on a ground fault protected circuit???

ken

Don't forget to post lots of pictures this year!!

Re the veggie garden - take it slow - as Ken says, it's way too early to be thinking of starting veggie seeds! When the ground is thawed enough to prepare the ground, do that - and then wait.... Sort your seeds by whether they are cool weather crops or whether they are warm weather ones. For instance peas can be planted in April or so, but beans need to wait until early June. Read the seed packets for recommended start dates for seed growing and make a schedule from that. Have you considered cold frames for seed starting and some early crops? Wherever possible, plant directly in the ground - easier and less root disturbance.... Some plants, though, are just easier to buy starts unless you NEED an uncommon variety - tomatoes are in that category in my books!

When I was growing up, my maternal grandfather maintained a 1/4 acre or so of veggie garden well into his 90s! An uncle helped do any tilling required and my sister and I had weeding and hand-watering chores. But Grandpa did all the supervising and a lot of the labour. His strategy was to go out and hoe a few rows (potatoes were his specialty!), go in the house to cool down and nap a bit, then go out again to hoe a few more rows.... Pace yourself!

I know about the time frame for veggie seeds - but some of the flowers I grow do take a good 12 weeks indoors, and that will be sometime early to mid March. I would like to have a cold frame eventually, but not right now, too much on my plate.

Yea, too early to till, but not too early to get the trenching/fencing/gate done and grass removed. I'm hesitant to have him till in the grass - I'm afraid I'll never get rid of it, it seems to sprout from any bit of root left, although anyone who's successfully tilled under grass please chime in! I'll have him spread the manure and till in all at once. He can buy a spreader attachment for the garden tractor (a good tiller attachment is really expensive, cheaper to rent or buy a good walk-behind tiller, there's some pretty powerful machines on the market - plus then I can use it for other beds).

HAHA I like grandpa's strategy, naps are always a pleasure!

Yes, my light cart is on a ground-fault circuit.

he could spray today with roundup ... and the grass.. in slo motion will suck it up.. and it will be dead by the proper time to till.. in late april early may ..

I'll bet a good part of your pasture grass is couchgrass! :-(. When I was looking for information on couchgrass to fight some here, I found a comment on the Ontario Ministry of Agriculte site saying up to 80% of pasture grass is often couchgrass! The only thing that slows it down is shade - it won't grow in shade. Maybe rent a sod-lifter rather than a tiller, and grow lots of squash and pumpkin vines to shade the soil for a few years:-). Rhubarb might be good at that too.... Maybe planting through layers of newspapers or that decomposable red 'plastic' mulch sheets for growing tomatoes might be useful. Lots of fun and lots of challenges ahead for you! Have fun - and post pictures!

I'd buy a walk behind tiller but it won't dig into the soil with pasture plants there. First I take the mower and cut all the grass and weeds down close to the ground and rake it up for compost somewhere else. Next I'd spray the area with round-up to kill off anything that's there. Cutting down the tops allows the round up to be concentrated in the root area. Spraying will allow you to dig the roots out easier. Once the roots are out you can till and amend the soil. When planting measure the distance of the 2 inside tines of the tiller and mark a line with tape or something on a hoe. Use this distance to measure the distance the rows are apart. After planting and until the plants get too big remove the 2 outside tiller tines and till between the rows to kill and weeds that have sprouted. Between the plants was done with a hoe. When the plants get big enough they will shade out any weeds. Later pick any weeds when you are in the garden

This is basically what we did years ago but we didn't have round-up then and dug out the grass and weeds by hand. People marvel that we don't have any weeds in our garden. I was told by an old gardener when we first started with our garden "leave 1 weed and you'll have a thousand next year"

Don't forget to post lots of pictures this year!!

We all love seeing "before and after" shots.

Yea, yea, I know. How many times have I whined about my cr*ppy old camera. Haven't gotten a new one yet. Maybe this year...

learn to post pix from your fancy phone ... ken

Or, if you don't want to use herbicide (eg Roundup), you can lay down a thick layer of newspaper and/or cardboard. You can find large amounts discarded behind certain stores. Then pile a couple of inches of compost or manure, and other goodies like old autumn leaves on top of that. These layers will kill the grass underneath and encourage healthy soil life such as earthworms to proliferate. Make sure it's damp so that it doesn't blow away and does start decomposing. It will take a couple or few months, but requires no herbicide, no tiller, no machinery, no yanking turf out, and it does start to create wonderfully friable soft fertile soil. And honestly, if you have to do it with machines and chemicals and yanking turf out, will you get all that work done and be ready to plant so soon anyway?

IME even relatively deep layers of cardboard and soil or mulch doesn't take care of the pasture grass I have here. I have no idea of its ID, but it can punch up through a good foot of densely packed soil or organic material, and the rhizomes seem able to hold enough nutrients for quite a good length of survival without light. Fortunately, in a veggie garden, if you don't remove all the grass the first year, that can be a fall job since the veggies clear out before the grass is completely dormant in most cases.

My best advice is to take things in manageable chunks (do you really need to prep the entire veggie garden space this season or can you do half this year and half next?), use lots of mulch to reduce weeding, and enjoy the process.

I don't have a fancy phone.

The previous owners had this area as their vegetable garden prior to last year but didn't plant it this past summer since they were selling the house. It's probably a mixture of grass and weeds - whatever seeded - and the horses have been allowed back in that area, so I'm thinking it may not be firmly rooted, what will all the trampling and eating and pooping on whatever seedlings took hold. Which will make the job a whole lot easier. I haven't gotten out there to really assess since it's too early to till. I don't want to use herbicides, I'll probably just go the good 'ol fashioned route of diggint/tilling.

Baby steps and permanent plantings such as fruit. Vegetables are a grind - no question.

Yep, definitely want to put some fruit it - thinking apricots, nectarines, peaches, blackberries. Blueberries might work in the shrub border (if I ever get around to that...), they're supposed to be pretty nice landscape plants.

Good thing I made out my seed schedule the other night -- only 12 weeks until planting-out date, didn't even realize it until I got out the calendar and marked everything up. ACK! So, started some flowers that take a good 10-12 weeks indoors; I'm working in small batches, and yesterday I got three colors of browallia sowed plus some geranium but still have New Guinea impatiens and vinca to sow this week. I also sowed some milkweed and put them in the fridge for stratification.

blueberries require an acidic soil so if your soil is alkaline they won't grow. I live in an area where blueberries grow wild. The best ones are always where a fire has gone through, if you can find such a place. Wood ashes as a mulch would be beneficial to blueberries

An extremely wet acidic soil at that. I could only manage a couple of bushes by planting in pots where the water butt used to collect from the shed roof. Continual dripping runoff, in ericaceous soil mix (and regular sequestrene) was the only way I could get any at all. Gave up and settled for blackcurrants and jostaberries while newly planted juneberry and saskatoons might have the first yield this summer.

The wild plums (P.cerasifera) and almond blossom is already out (as well as the ubiquitous sloe - prunus spinosa)...I would grow any of these even without the additional crop potential (in fact the almond hybrid - an almond x apricot has horrible soft-shelled nuts which I leave on the ground as a mulch)...but the curl can be an issue. For the first time in living memory, I was on time with spraying at bud break and leaf fall at both ends of the year.

It's creeping up on us...panic is in the post.

You said.................... there is a grand total of one bush in the entire front of the house LOL!

Reminds me of my laughter when I was all excited when I found my dream 4 acre property. I could not believe there wasn't much landscape planting. I discovered all the wildlife was the reason. It was not just herds of deer, there was groundhog that can eat as much as deer, rabbits, squirrels and, and..

The one thing I would suggest buy plants slow so you do not lose a lot of money until you are sure that the sparse planting is not because the previous owners did not like plants but the animals might have liked the plants more.

I am still planting like a wild gardener but I plant and protect according to keep the critters at bay. Nothing worst than planting your bushes and trees and get up the next morning looking at a stub down to the ground

When I made new beds last year, my huband rented a sod cutter. Worked like a charm and he was able to get all of our beds cut in one afternoon. In the past, I have not had luck tilling in the dead sod into the beds. I would end up raking it out of the tilled beds afterwards because it never completely broke down. I will never make a bed without using a sod cutter from now on! Also, if you happen to be amending the soil with horse manure, make sure it is OLD. I only used 3 year old horse manure once. I will never use it again. The amount of weeds was unbelievable. This will be such a fun season for you!

Never thought of the sod cutter, great idea!