Spring Vegetable Garden Prep PLUS FREE Printable

Spring is an exciting season. Especially for new gardeners.

It’s a great excuse and the best time to start fresh — especially when it comes to your new vegetable garden preparation.

Spring Vegetable Garden Prep is easy when you have a plan!

Get Ready For Spring With This FREE Spring Vegetable Garden Prep List Printable

Once the temperatures begin to rise, you’ll soon find yourself caught up in a frenzy of rich soil preparation, seed sowing, growing, and taking care of your bountiful gardens!

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Before early spring starts, get a head start by prepping early and enjoy a beautiful garden later.

Here’s a guide we made especially for you to get a good start preparing your garden or flower garden for the busy growing season and time of year.

Clear Your Garden

Clean your large or small garden and get rid of any dead leaves, dead wood, weeds, rocks, dead branches, and plant debris.

Vegetable plants, flowers, and other plants prefer a tidy place to grow, so it’s a must to have a tidy area ready for them.

Throughout the fall and winter months, your garden might be exposed to different elements, so it’s important to start clearing your garden as quickly as you can.

Put any dead organic matter and organic materials in your compost pile. Remove any weeds that you see. Put them in your compost bin or burn them.

The sooner you clean out the garden beds, the better chance you have of a healthy, happy spring garden later.

Prepare Your Garden Tools

Pull out your gardening tools and hand tools that have been sitting in your storage area or garage all fall and winter.

Since it’s almost time to use these tools again, make sure that they are ready to do the job. Clean them off with soap and water.

Use a scourer to give the bladed tools a thorough clean to ensure you don’t pass on any viruses to your new young plants.

Side Note: Always clean your tools between using them on another plant or area to ensure you’re not passing anything to the next plant or area.

If they have wooden handles, make sure that you use mineral spirits. This will prevent the wood from splintering and hurting your hands in the process.

Sharpen your tools to improve their performance. Once you’re done sharpening them, apply oil or WD40 to the hinges and blades.

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Clear Out And Clean The Greenhouse

It’s the perfect time to give the greenhouse its much-needed cleaning. Wash the exterior of the greenhouse with detergent or disinfectant to remove any moss, algae, and grime.

This will allow more light to enter and removes any potential homes for pests, mold, and diseases. Make sure to disinfect the inside of the covering (glass or plastic), too.

Sweep the floor, shelves, and benches. Wash them with a hot solution of garden disinfectant and give them a good scrub. Clean the pots and seed trays with soap and water to prevent disease.

Once the greenhouse is clean and dry, inspect the structure for any damages. Check if there are any exposed areas or parts that need replacement.

Clean Republic Disinfectant

CleanSmart Hospital Grade Disinfectant

Remove Unwanted Pests

Before you start planting vegetables and other plants, get rid of any hibernating pests like snails, slugs, or aphids so they will not get the opportunity to get into your plants.

If you haven’t cleared last year’s pots of summer bedding, check for white-vine-weevil larvae. These pests live in the garden, compost, and feed on your plant roots.

Destroy them as soon as you find them. You may use chemical drenches or parasitic nematodes.

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Give The Soil Some TLC

One of the most important steps of Spring Vegetable Garden Prep is to make sure that the bare soil is ready for spring planting.

Start the garden soil preparation by turning the soil surface and top of the soil over using a pitchfork or garden fork and rake it out.

This will also clear out any weeds.

Then the addition of organic matter and organic material such as fresh compost from your composting bin or use store-bought compost, compost made from kitchen scraps and peat moss, or organic fertilizer and fresh manure such as chicken manure and green manure to nourish the fertile soil and help with any poor soil and improve the soil structure.

Premium Organic Compost

Blue Ribbon Organic Compost

Start A Composting Area

Setting up your own compost system in your garden is a good idea. Plus, you have plenty of different options to choose to go about it, and it doesn’t take up much space. This will be your ready-made composting bin.

The composting garden area is where you can put all your organic waste and rich organic matter. Once everything is broken down, you’ll end up with rich compost to help with plant growth, and your plants will love it.

Place a good mixture of grass clippings, fruits, and vegetable peelings, paper, and woody prunings in your composting area. You can also try and build your own Worm Composting Bin like mine.

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Maintain Trellis, Fences, And Gates

Don’t forget while you’re doing your Spring Vegetable Garden Prep to check your trellis, fences, and gates for any signs of weather damage or decay.

Fix any broken structures in time for the next season like spring and summer.

Clean the panels with a power washer. This will remove any mildew, dirt, and moss which might affect the plants. You may also use a stiff brush to remove grime.

Once the wood is completely dry, apply two coats of paint, stain, or wood preservative.

Preservation Solutions Pentacryl Wood Stabilizer

THOMPSONS WATERSEAL VOC Wood Protector, 1.2-Gallon

Set Up New Garden Beds And Planters

Build any new garden beds, new raised beds, and planters you may need for your new garden plants. Install some window boxes or shepherd’s hooks.

Order some new pots to ensure that you have enough places for your new plants.

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Apply Mulch

Apply a thick layer of organic mulch such as wood chips wherever you can. Don’t forget the top layer and the top few inches of soil on the bare spots.

Mulch is great for weed control since it is effective in keeping weeds from sprouting. A few inches of compost is a great mulch, too.

Every time the healthy garden soil gets watered, or it rains, the now wet soil the organic matter breaks down, and essential plant nutrients in the compost are released into the loose soil.

This helps keep your plants and vegetable crops well-fed with healthy soil and creates good soil fertility.

Another great mulch idea is to use layers of newspaper on your garden’s soil. It makes a great form of compost for your home garden and garden vegetables.

Once you’ve added your healthy plants, make sure to apply some high quality mulch in your garden beds, flower beds, vegetable garden beds, and planters.

100% Pine Bark Mulch

FibreDust CoCo Mulch

To help you in remember all these steps, we prepared a free printable for you. Print it out and keep it handy. You can also place it your greenhouse door – inside, of course :)!

It’s never too early to start. Before it gets here, make sure you take care of the Spring Vegetable Garden Prep so your garden and raised garden beds are a happy place for you and your plants and own vegetables – and a few butterflies and bees, too!

What are you planning to plant this spring season?

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