What should I add to my garden soil to get my garden ready for summer

Soot...from a chimney or fine ash from an outdoor fire pit..its rich in potash, darkens the soil and it heats up the soil as well...and ready's your garden for planting. Dig it into the soil and there you go...

Compost. All gardeners should be making compost from leaves, garden waste, and vegetable peels, etc., from the kitchen. A little manure from horses, cows, or poultry won't hurt either. If you can shred it small, it's better, but in just a couple of years you can create a lot of really rich black soil.

Compost is always helpful! I also like to mulch with 4 or 5” of clean wheat straw. It helps hold in moisture and reduces weeds.

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Seaweed or seaweed pellets rich in minerals such as iodine and potassium dug in and turned regularly will ariate it, keep it weed free in preparation for planting.

I use shredded leaves in my veggie garden, I have four very large mature trees that gives me more than enough to cover that with about five inches and four inches in my hosta garden in the front. I take off some of the excess in the spring and till it into my veggie garden. The areas in the front get a lot of whole leaves from the maple and I remove some of that in the spring because they get real matted and put them in a pole in the corner of my veggie garden or put them in garbage bags in the corner of our fence for a couple of years where no one can see them.

Do not add anything until you get a soil test. Your County Agricultural Extension Cooperative will have them and can tell you how to do it. Your soil should be within a certain pH range. Too many people spend money putting additives in their soil that is not needed.

Save eggs shells, put them in a blender, compact them and sprinkle in garden for extra calcium. Save used tea bags and coffee grounds and sprinkle those in there too. Let them dry out and use that too. If soil needs it vermiculite or compost. You don't have to spend a lot of money on stuff that most people throw away.

I put all my egg shells and coffee grounds in my garden and also sprinkle some epson salts in there as well.