How to Prepare Borders for Planting in Sustainable Gardening

Hi! I am Susan Harris and I am talking about Sustainable Gardening. In this clip, I am going to cover how to prepare your borders for planting. The first job to do is after you've marked the edge of your border is to cut along that painted line. So, for that I use this flat-edge tool. I put it right where the paint is and just cut along there. I just keep cutting where the paint is.

Now the biggest part of the job, is to then remove all of this sod or grass and all the weeds. The slow and easy way to do that is to take a newspaper of at least six inch, six different sheets of newspaper or even cardboard, cover it with mulch and water it in and just wait about four or, five months and it will become decompose then, it will have actually improved your soil.

So, here is how it works. This is six layers of newspaper. Cover it up. Weight down, put little waits or rocks around the edge so, that it will stay down, water it in and in five months, all of it will have decomposed and you will have actually improved your soil quite a bit. And if you like to get it started, planting say your biggest items, you could even cut a hole in the newspaper and plant a few of your big items .

The other way to remove all of these is of course by hand. So, you would take, you could actually use up a shovel or -- if there are a lot of them and it's a small area, you might use a hand tool like this and just take out each weed individually. So, in the next clip, I am going to cover the major group of plant shrubs and small trees.


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