Topsoil is just the thing for spring
Clean up beds and do a little light digging before adding a thin layer for great results
It's been pretty cold and miserable in the city so far this month, so I haven't been able to get out and spend as much time as I'd like in the garden just yet. But we've got the whole month of April (and even if needed, early May) to get things ready for spring, so I'm not worried.
This time of year, most of my focus is on cleaning up the beds and putting down a nice layer of fresh topsoil for the new season. Topsoil is the nearest thing gardeners have to a secret formula: no matter what kind of soil you begin with, if you add a thin blanket of this wonderful chocolatey stuff each spring, you'll eventually end up with near-perfect soil almost without trying.
In a lot of southern Ontario, the “wild” (i.e., undisturbed) soil is basically till, a legacy of the “tilling” action of the glaciers 12,000 years ago. Till is very fine and has little body — think of the Scarborough Bluffs on the east side of Toronto, steadily eroding in the winds off Lake Ontario — but in some areas it's been naturally amended by composted soil from forest vegetation, or near the lake shore, beach sand.
The good news is that with some exceptions, topsoil will solve most any soil problem. If your soil is either very fine or very sandy, you can enrich it with compost, or even manure (I prefer sheep manure to cow manure; it's finer and isn't quite as, you know, fragrant), but topsoil already contains a balance of loam and compost, so it's good for most average soils.
Because my garden is quite small, I usually just load up my car with a dozen or so bags of topsoil from the grocery store; this time of year it's pretty inexpensive. But if you have a large garden or a lot of ground to cover, you might find it more economical to buy in bulk.
The time to apply it is when you're doing your spring cleanup; your flower beds should be well thawed and the ground soft and moist.
Remove the mulch and dead stalks and leaves from last year's growth, then gently rough up the soil surface with a hand fork or a rake. I like to work on one area at a time, just to keep things manageable.
Once you've got a nice section of bare earth in front of you, trowel on a couple of inches' worth of topsoil straight from the bag, dig it in a bit and tamp down lightly (don't press too hard!), smoothing out the surface with your hand as you go.
One note: be very careful around the emerging tips of plants and stems of bulbs and other plants that are already up and growing. (It's OK to cover tiny emerging tips, but don't let it pile up around the stems of growing plants or it could cause rot.)
I love the look of my flower beds once the job is done; the black loam makes a beautiful, velvety backdrop for the daffodils and tulips that are just coming into bloom now. And it's like giving your garden a spring feast! Believe me, you will notice the difference a few weeks from now.
Please feel free to write in with your questions (if I can't answer you, I'll find someone who can), or to share your own city gardening adventures. Write to me at marthasgarden07@gmail.com.