We plant year round in our garden. The two biggest planting seasons for us are Spring and Fall. During the transition between the major seasons, we usually have some cleanup to do. I picked my worst, most grass infested garden beds to demonstrate how easy this process is. These beds were overgrown with watermelon, Swiss chard and volunteer sweet potatoes.
The first thing to do was to pull out as many of the vines and large weeds as I could. This step took about 30 minutes. Next, I used the weed eater to take out and grass that I did not want to pull. Because these beds had volunteer sweet potatoes growing in them, we had to excavate the tubers. (We harvested 35 pounds of tubers in these beds). I usually don’t have to pull up my sidewalks during a garden bed cleanup, but because there were tubers under the sidewalks, I did in this case.
The final step was to rake the ground smooth and lay my sidewalks back down. Now these beds are all ready for Fall planting. I don’t normally have to do this much work with all of my beds. Most beds just have to have the old, spent plants pulled and the ground smoothed. I wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to get even the most weed filled beds ready for the next planting.
To see how the rest of the garden is looking, check out this quick tour. I hope this inspires you to get out in the garden!