So you want to start a vegetable garden? Where to start? You start with preparing the soil to plant. There are three methods or techniques. They all work. There difference is in the time it takes to do the job.
Newspaper Beds On Lawn
If you want to set up a vegetable garden on a space now filled with turf, you can do it without having to remove the turf. This technique is best done in the fall. You lay out your beds and paths for the garden. The beds should be 3 to 4 feet wide and 6 to 12 feet long. The paths should be two feet, or at least the width of your lawn mower since it is easiest to leave the paths to grass. Now lay 6-8 layers of wet newspaper of the area of the beds. On top of the newspaper you will shovel 2 to 4 inches of top soil that has been mixed with some peat moss and some compost. Over the top soil goes 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch such as straw, chopped leaves, or shredded pine bark. Over the winter the turf will die and decomposition will start. By May you can set the mulch aside and plant your garden.
Rototill and Shovel
Another technique to build a veggie patch is to remove all the sod where the garden will be located. Put the sod in the compost pile. Now using a heavy duty 5 hp rototiller (can be rented) till up the whole area of the garden thoroughly. Now take your stakes and string and lay out the beds and paths (same dimensions as above). Now you take your handy shovel and place all of the top soil that is in the paths up on to the beds. When you finished you have a raised bed garden ready to plant.
Double Digging
This is the very best way to prepare the soil for a vegetable garden but it takes the most work. Again remove the sod from the garden area. Now take your stakes and string and lay out the beds and the paths as above. Start at the end of the first bed and dig a ditch across the end of the bed about 6 to 8 inches wide and deep. Place the soil you remove into a garden cart or on a tarp as you will need it later.
Now add an inch or two of some kind of organic material into the ditch - chopped straw, chopped leaves, etc. The take a garden fork and very thoroughly loosed that layer of sub soil at the bottom of the ditch; some of the organic matter will work its way down into the subsoil as you do this part.
Now take a step backwards on the bed and dig another ditch across the bed putting the top soil into the first ditch. Repeat the process over and over again until you reach the other end of bed. You move the soil you removed from the first ditch and fill that last ditch. You now have a bed that is loosened down more than 12 inches and has a good shot of organic matter to get the soil food web cooking.
Soil Management
Here's the deal. Technically after the garden has been built and is planted we are not managing the soil. We are managing the food source for what's called the soil food web; all the critters living in a healthy soil from the earthworms down to the smallest bacteria. If we feed the soil food web with organic matter every year, it is the creatures making up the soil food web that feed the soil and in turn feed our vegetable plants.
Soil management then entails keeping a 3 to 4 inch layer of organic mulch on the surface of the garden 365 days a year. As the thickness of the mulch goes down, we add more material. It is that simple. The paths of the garden are covered with wood chips and the beds of the garden are covered full time by some organic material such as straw. In fact straw is probably the best food for the soil food web available in most areas. Notice we are not digging the straw into the soil. The earthworms pull the straw down into the soil and distribute it to the rest of the soil food web.
If you put a layer of straw mulch over the garden after your first roto tilled it, you should not have to roto till that garden ever again. The worms and the other creatures in the soil food web will keep that soil loose and friable. After three or four years your "good" soil will go down 12 to 15 inches and all you did was keep a layer of straw on your garden 24/7.