First clear the existing vegetation in the proposed planting area.

• Use a mower, slasher or whipper snipper/weed whacker and cut down the existing vegetation as low as possible.

Now use a broadfork or digging fork to loosen the subsoil. This will aerate the soil and loosen it up for the vegetable roots when they eventually reach it …

• Take your broadfork/digging fork and apply pressure with one foot to press the tines into the soil, then pull back on the handles to lift and loosen the lower soil slightly.
• Raise the tines out of the soil, move 6 in (15 cm) further back, and repeat the sequence until you make a full pass down the bed.

 

 

You’ll want to get rid of the weeds without having to dig them out. To do so you’ll need a weed barrier that will eventually break down and exclude the light so that you kill the weeds.

• Lay down a biodegradable weed barrier – use cardboard, newspaper, dense burlap, etc.
• Ensure there is a plenty of overlap since grass is hard to kill and you don’t want to leave any space open to it to re-emerge.
• Soak the cardboard or weed barrier to begin the breaking-down process.

If you want to save money on compost and have some soil or decomposed animal manure lying around ready to be used you can add it as a base layer.

• Add aged animal manure such as straw bedding (the older the better), chicken manure, or add loose soil material.
• Spread these on the ground over the whole sheet mulch surface area.

Now put down the compost. The compost is the principal medium for your crops and the main investment you need to make if you want to start the no-till garden. If you don’t have the necessary volume at hand, buy some. The compost will more than pay for itself and will last for many crops to come, not just for the initial plantings.

• Lay down 3-4 in (10-15 cm) of compost – use green waste compost, homemade compost, mushroom compost or a combination of them.
• Spread it out evenly across the garden bed area with hands or a landscape rake.
• Slightly compress the compost by walking on it so that it holds the moisture better, and so that the plants can root properly and won’t fall over.

If necessary as a final layer you can add mulch. This will help you reduce the weed competition, slow the loss of moisture and improve soil fertility.

• Add 3 to 6 inches (7.5-15 centimeters) of mulch layer materials such as straw, hay, grass clippings, shredded leaves, sugarcane, etc.
• Spread it out evenly across the garden bed area with hands.

First try to get an idea of how much soil/compost you’ll need to fill your raised garden bed. It’s useful to know what to expect logistically in terms of volume required and the price tag so that you can better plan how to build up your raised garden beds. You could, if your resources allow it, fill the entire raised bed with a good compost. But if you find this too expensive you can use plain soil and other organic materials to make up for the volume required.

• Assuming that your beds are square or rectangular use this formula to calculate the volume —> V (volume) = L (bed’s length) x W (bed’s width) x H (bed’s height).
• Measure the length, width and height of your bed. Convert all measurements to the same unit (inches to feet, or centimeters to meters).
• Multiply all the measurement together as per formula V = L x W x H.
• For US measures divide the answer by 27 to get the number in cubic yards.

If you don’t have enough soil depth, start the bed prep by loosening the soil at the bottom of the raised bed. You can do this with a broadfork or a shovel.

Loosening the soil with a broadfork:

• Take your broadfork/digging fork and apply pressure with one foot to press the tines into the soil, then pull back on the handles to lift and loosen the lower soil slightly.
• Raise the tines out of the soil, move 6 in (15 cm) further back, and repeat the sequence until you make a full pass down the bed.

Note: You can use mattock if you don’t have a broadfork.

Loosening the soil with a shovel:

• Divide your garden bed into tranches as wide as your shovel’s blade.
• Dig up the first trench; go one shovel-blade deep into the ground and take out the soil. Set it aside, out of the bed.
• Remove rocks and debris, and check for any roots that already occupy that space.
• Then, dig up the next trench, take off the shovel-blade deep of soil and dump it into the trench you just dug. Clear up the soil.
• Repeat the process until you run out of garden, then, in the last trench, put your first trench’s soil back in as the last thing you do.

 

If your raised bed is somewhat higher and you want to decrease the amount of soil required to fill it up, then you can add woody materials to it. The woody material will slowly decompose, warm up the bed in the process, and eventually add to organic matter content of the bed.

• Add the layer of woody material on the bottom of the raised bed – use various woody materials such as offcuts, logs, sticks, twigs…

 

Depending on the bed volume you might add some “filler” materials so that you save money on the compost. As with the no-till garden bed prep these might be plain soil you have lying around, or decomposed animal manure, but you can also make a mix with sand, coconut coir, peat moss…

• Add the filler material to the raised garden bed.
  Spread equally over the whole raised garden bed area with your hands or rake.
• Compact the filer material by walking over it so that you avoid sinkage and air pockets.

 

Finally, fill the remaining of the bed with compost or so-called garden soil.

• Lay down the compost – use green waste compost, homemade compost, mushroom compost or a combination.
• Spread it out evenly across the garden bed area by hand or a landscape rake.
• Slightly compress the compost by walking on it so that it holds the moisture better, and so that the plants can root properly and won’t fall over.

 

If necessary, as a final layer you can add mulch. This will help you reduce the weed competition, slow the loss of moisture and improve soil fertility.

• Add 3 to 6 in (7.5-15 cm) of mulch layer materials such as straw, hay, grass clippings, shredded leaves, sugarcane…
• Spread it out evenly across the garden bed area with your hands.

 

 

 

Your goal is to make the plot completely smooth. Use a walk-behind tractor with a tiller implement/attachment to start breaking new ground.

• Start tilling on the perimeter and work your way around the whole plot.
• Make 3+ passes over the entire plot for the soil to break down sufficiently.

Note: On a bigger plot you’ll want to use a tractor with cultivator to break new ground. Walk-behind tractors work well on smaller plots, and you could cultivate a bigger area if necessary but that would be too labor- and time intensive.

After you have thoroughly tilled your plot, it’s time to remove any debris from the soil and flatten it so that you can easily shape your beds later on.

• Use a landscape rake to remove any debris.
• As you are removing the debris flatten out and roughly level the entire plot.

 

Once you have your plot prepared, you can start forming the beds. You should aim to ensure your beds are standardized. In most cases that means 30 in (75 cm) wide – this is standard for biointensive vegetable gardening and most of the tools you’ll end up using are themselves standardized to that width. How long the beds are going to be is totally up to you.

• Determine where your walkways are and measure them out if necessary.
• Use a shovel or a hoe and remove the soil from the walkways onto the beds or…
• Alternatively just walk your future walkways with two feet of distance twice, compacting it and outlining its layout.

 

Now use a broadfork or digging fork to loosen the subsoil. This will aerate the soil and loosen it up for the vegetable roots when they eventually reach it …

• Take your broadfork/digging fork and apply pressure with one foot to press the tines into the soil, then pull back on the handles to lift and loosen the lower soil slightly.
• Raise the tines out of the soil, move 6 in (15 cm) further back, and repeat the sequence until you make a full pass down the bed.

 

After the initial tilling, raking and shaping it is time to prepare the bed for planting. In this step you add organic fertilizer and organic compost. Focus on nitrogen-rich organic fertilizers as they will supply the necessary nitrogen for the early stages of the plant growth when they need it the most for fast development. The compost will then later on take over the job of releasing the rest of the required nutrients for optimum growth.

• Sprinkle the beds with poultry manure pellets or other organic nitrogen rich fertilizer such as blood meal.
• Spread a layer of well-finished compost on the soil. Use roughly a 5-gallon bucket (20 l) to every 10 ft (3 m) of 30-inch-wide (0.7m) bed.

 

Once you’ve spread organic fertilizers and compost on the bed surface, till the fertilizer and compost into the beds.

• Use a walk-behind tractor with a tiller implement / attachment to mix the organic fertilizers and compost into the soil