Using organic compost in your vegetable garden for the spring season
Preparing your vegetable garden for the upcoming spring season is easy when using organic compost which you have saved throughout the year. Adding compost to the soil prior to planting vegetable seeds or plants will provide the essential nutrients required for the vegetables to grow. To make your own homemade compost blend, add cut grass and disposed vegetable greens, used coffee grains, eggshells, tree bark, vegetable and fruit peels. The compost can be stored inside a container designed specifically for this use or in a pile somewhere in your yard near the vegetable garden. It is important that the compost is in a finished state rather than a developing state before it is added to the soil.
Bagged vegetable garden soil with the compost blended in can be added directly to the area where the seeds and plants will be grown. The best way to blend them is to spread a three-inch layer of the soil in the garden area, then spread a two-inch layer of compost on top of the soil. Use a garden shovel to turn over the soil to blend in the compost well. Once the soil is well mixed and drained, the vegetable seeds or plants are ready for planting.
Once the plants are in the ground, some additional compost can be added at the base of each plant. For vegetables being grown directly from seeds, wait until they have begun sprouting and in the flowering stage before compost is added to the base of each plant. The frequency of compost application in the vegetable garden depends on what is being grown, which can be anywhere from four to ten weeks during the growing season. For example, tomato plants benefit from compost added to the base of each plant every four to six weeks; lettuce benefits from compost every eight to ten weeks; and cucumbers benefit from additional compost every six to eight weeks.
While the vegetable garden is busy thriving on the added compost, don’t forget to continue adding more to your compost pile so that it can enter its finished state for use during the following growing season.
Image Credit: Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
