Breaking Ground: How to establish new garden beds

Our new garden is an old pool that was filled in with red clay fill dirt. Someone must have gotten tired of all the upkeep and maintenance required to keep a pool nice and clean and just had it filled in. It has been growing weeds ever since. I decided that it was the perfect place for my garden and my husband decided it was the perfect place for the kids play yard, so now it's both, part playground, part garden.

It may not look like much now, but on the left side you can see some straw mulch covering our onions, beans corn and sunflowers. The three circles in the middle will eventually be planted with herbs. We have only just begun! Notice the fencing? That's the most important feature right now, it contains our twin two year old toddler tornadoes, and keeps the chickens and goats out of out garden.

Breaking ground in a new garden bed can be a lot of work. Here's how we prepped our beds for planting.

1. First we double dug the beds. Breaking up the lumps of red clay as we go. A tiller would have made this much easier, but since we don't have one, we used a shovel. 
2. Add lots of organic material and manure (compost!)
3. Plant seeds or started plants
4. Mulch heavily

Written out like that it seems so easy, just 4 simple steps, but when you're out there with a shovel in your hands it isn't quite as easy as it looks. The payoff is worth it though, I can't wait to see our garden grow!