Priming the garden canvas

Weather was great, here in Ontario, Canada, this past Sunday. At last a chance to start working on the gardens. Something I love about gardening, is that in the Spring, each year you have a blank canvas to work with! Once I have all the earth churned and topped up with compost and a nice clean layer of top soil, I imagine what I'll grow there and how beautiful it will look.

I am not one of the neatest gardeners. I usually leave ripping up spent annuals and other plant matter from the previous season until the Spring. I figure it's a way of composting. As you can imagine, it's a lot of work in Spring to prime my garden canvas.

Also great exercise. Did you know you can burn approximately 250 calories an hour gardening? 350 if you are hoeing, which is pretty much what I was doing on Sunday.

But I digress. I primed my small vegetable plot with a method called "Lasagna Gardening", sometimes called sheet or layer gardening.

It's a great way to accomplish good things like:
- Weed control
- Fertilizing the soil
- Recycling

Will post more on how to do that with my next blog.