Preparing Your Garden

Now that you have picked out a place for your garden, its time to prepare it.  Remove any debris from the garden, and stake it off. Put stakes at each corner of the area and run a sting or twine around the garden. You now have an outline of the area that will be YOUR Garden.
Now you need to loosen the soil. Till the soil several times, if you have access to a roto tiller. If not, you’ll have to use a shovel. This will take some time, but is one of the most important things you will do for your garden.
Start at one end of the garden (keeping your back to the garden) dig a shovelful up and lay it outside the string at the edge of the garden. Continue this digging across the width of your garden. When you finish you’ll have an open furrow (trench). To start the next row, keep your back to the garden and dig into the soil. Turn this shovelful upside down into the open furrow. Doing it this way will put the sod below the soil, where it will end up decomposing. Continue in this fashion, always turning the sod upside down into the furrow. After you have dug the soil out of the last row, bring the soil from the FIRST furrow you dug and place in this one.
After a few days, chop up the clumps with a hoe or shovel, as well as you can. Do this several times, in the next few days. If you have the time, do a shallow spading of the area again. This will reduce weeds and keep the soil nice and crumbly.