Soil is the foundation of all plants that grow in your garden. Soils are the heart of successful gardening and a bountiful harvest. If you plan to grow flowers vegetables, herbs or any plant for that matter in your garden, you must give sober thought to the quality of your garden's soil. Fertile soil leads to an abundant harvest yet gardening enthusiasts tend to neglect this important component.

If you plant crops in your garden without a good foundation, that is, healthy soil, you will not see the successful fulfillment of your hard work. Gardeners should not only focus on using the right gardening equipment along with pest and disease control measures but should also ensure they thoroughly prepare the soil and be mindful of its nutritional capacity and content.

Importance of Garden Soil

If you have spent any time tending a garden, then you know how fundamentally important your garden soil is. Garden soil is the heart and life of your garden. Plants will grow well in rich organic soil. Gardeners that grow flowers, vegetables, fruits and other plants realize that florae mature well in healthy soil.

Garden soil plays a huge role in the way plants grow because it provides support and anchors plant root systems. Plants will obtain most of their essential nutrients from the soil, not from sun or water. Garden soil is also used as a storehouse for water and necessary food rudiments.

Garden soils also contain microscopic organisms that carry out vital duties that support your plant’s development. These microorganisms unlock nutrients for use by plants and they also break down dead plant matter, returning their nutrients to the earth in a perfectly balanced system. Your garden soil should, therefore, be healthy, porous and loose to allow for water absorption and nutrient retention to be transferred to your plants.

Preparing Your Soil

Preparing your garden soil before planting will ensure you achieve a deep, fertile and loose soil that will aid in the production of a plentiful crop. Properly fixing the soil requires the use of appropriate gardening equipment as well as a good dose of patience. A shovel is necessary for turning your soil thoroughly. The shovel’s harp edge is good for breaking dense earth into finer particles and for cutting through tree feeder roots. While processing your soil, be sure to remove any lose stones, weeds and roots you come across.

Once your soil is completely turned, you are ready to add a healthy layer of organic matter in the form of animal waste or rich compost to augment nutrients in the base layer. These organic materials are gifts for the garden, as they will add richness and conditioning to your soil; ensuring the health of your fruits, vegetables and herbs. Be sure to turn and mix the organic matter into your soil using lightweight, ergonomic gardening tools.

Garden soil is unarguably the most important element for plant growth. Before planting, gardeners should ensure they prepare their soil suitably so as to enhance soil structure. Follow these tips to improve the overall quality of your soil and watch as your plants in turn yield superb crops this growing season.

If the most important women in your life are gardening buffs, why not take advantage of this Mother's Day season to score a few points by finding the perfect gardening gifts to pair with her interest? But before you rush to your local home improvement store, make sure you consider the following gardening gift ideas for women first.

General Gift Ideas

Women love beautiful things. That is why the items that should be on the top of any respectable gardening gifts list must be merchandise that will enhance the overall look of your recipient’s garden. You can never go wrong with a well thought out gardening gift this Mother's Day.

Up front a few garden accessory options to consider are garden bells to turn gentle breezes into subtle sound in her garden space.  Add timeless style to her garden by giving a garden statue this Mother’s Day.  Your mother or wife will find herself delighting in luxurious comfort with your gift of an attractive garden bench.  Rain chains, wind chimes, wind spinners, customized stepping stones and many other Mother’s Day gifts are waiting at your local garden center. But what if you want to give something more personal?

Homemade Gift Ideas

If you are the creative type and would like to give your special lady a more unique gift this Mother’s Day, then why not consider taking on a homemade gift venture? Potted planting projects make simple but impact full gifts for the garden.

To get started you'll need a pot, some ceramic fruit or vegetable, seeds, a nice ribbon, and Kraft paper stickers. What to do: Place the ceramic fruit or vegetable in the pot. Once you have your materials, place the seeds that match the ceramic fruit or vegetable in an envelope. Afterwards, place a paper sticker containing the seed planting directions into the envelope. And finally, to make your homegrown present attractive, tie the ribbon around the pot. Any color will do. If you are not particularly handy or wealthy, don’t worry there are options for you too.

Inexpensive Gift Ideas

Expressing your love this season does not need to be expensive. There are quite a few inexpensive gardening gifts she is sure to appreciate. The key here is to find something that is sensible and useful. Simple gardening items like garden gloves, a well made apron, a stylish hat, a seed shaker, and the like are enough to put smiles on faces this Mother's Day and won’t require a loan to purchase. You can also bundle a few personal items with your package, like her favorite scented hand lotion, an exfoliating hand soap, or elegant perfume. 

Create a Gift Basket

Gift baskets are super easy to make even if you haven't done it before. All you need is a wicker basket and some gardening gift ideas for mothers like plant food spikes, plant markers, small peat pots, instructional DVD’s, gardening shears or other functional and decorative items. Make sure you arrange the articles nicely inside the basket. Also, don't forget to add a ribbon and a personalized tag with an expressive message like, “You Fill the Garden of My Heart With Love” to make the basket more appealing and unique.

Mother's Day only comes once a year, so make it a memorable experience by heaping on her beautiful and practical gardening gifts. If you consider the above gardening gift ideas women will love, you are sure to choose the perfect gift.

A raised bed is the type of garden made up of beds of soil raised some distance above the ground.  The beds encase the soil separating the garden space from the surrounding environment. Soil beds are intended to allow an individual to tend to plants without having to stoop to ground level but not so high that it makes proper plant care cumbersome.

A Raised garden bed offers significant advantages to the gardener owing to the nature of its design. Raised bed gardens are often used for cultivating delicate seedlings and reducing soil compaction from stepping on the soil. Raised beds also isolate your soil, preventing surrounding earth from finding its way in.  This fact allows you to better control the quality of your garden soil. Simple gardening tools can also be used to weed and perform other routine maintenance functions in your elevated garden. Actually building a raised garden is simpler than most might think.

How to Build Your Garden

Before beginning the construction of a raised bed garden, issues of space availability and building materials should be considered. The width of the bed should be about 4 ft, the height about 10 to 16 inches. As long as space is available the length can be left to the builder's discretion.

The most commonly used building material is rot resistant wood due to its natural resilience, including locally available cedar and redwood even though others work well too. Bed construction tools include a handsaw, square, level, hammer, screwdriver and drill and some simple tools for gardening like a shovel.

The basic frame is constructed by cutting out pieces of wood according to the desired length. The various ends are held together and measured with a level to ensure that they are flat. The corner posts are then fitted and the frames fastened with screws such that each corner post has two frames that are intersecting at the corner. Another row of similar sized board is added below the first and then screwed together to the corner post as was previously done.

Soil can then be poured into the bed and braces added if the beds are over 18 feet high. Braces prevent the bed from bending out by reinforcing the bed with aluminum supports screwed to the opposite sides across the bed. Stones and other unwanted material should be removed from the bed once it has been filled with fertile soil. Once the soil is added, gardening equipment can then be used to level the soil as required.

Design Idea

Raised beds can be designed in different ways that allow the aesthetic value of flowers to be enjoyed while accommodating the space available. Circular designs are versatile and can be used to shape flowerbeds situated in small spaces.

Raised beds are great for creating controlled garden environments while reducing the caretaker’s workload. Design flexibility allows them to be both practical and decorative gardening environments. A fairly easy construction process makes raised beds an ideal idea option for any gardening enthusiast.