How to Pull up Weeds & Put Down Top Soil & Seeds

With a little bit of hard work you can transform a bed of weeds into a fertile carpet of green vegetables. Weeds often grow back from roots left in the ground after they pulled up. With the right techniques you can pull up weeds and put them down for good. Knowing how much top soil to add over your freshly weeded garden and how to apply it will give you a thriving garden even the most tenacious weed can not match.

Gloves

Shovel

Trash bags

Plastic sheet

Top soil

Rototiller

Wooden stakes

String

Seeds

Use your shovel to dig up one of the weeds and the dirt around its root system. Break the soil away from the roots with your fingers and examine them. If the plant has a single large root beneath the stem, it grows a taproot. If it has many roots that spread out from the base, it has a fibrous root system.

Remove weeds that have a taproot by pushing your fingers into the soil around the taproot and grasping it. Pull the weed out of the ground by the taproot with a smooth twisting motion, and dispose of it in a trash bag. Repeat this process for the other taproot-bearing weeds in your bed.

Grasp weeds with a fibrous root system by the foliage at the base of the plant and pull the plant up. Wiggle your fingers through the dirt clinging to the roots to knock it loose and dispose of it in a trash bag. Repeat this process for all of the remaining weeds in your bed.

Put down your plastic sheet at a convenient place near your garden bed, and shift your topsoil on to the sheet. Check the topsoil for any rocks, sticks or trash and remove them.

Spread your topsoil evenly over the garden bed until it is about two inches deep throughout your garden. Run the rototiller over your garden to mix the topsoil into the upper two inches of your garden bed.

Spread the rest of your topsoil over the surface of your garden bed. Use enough topsoil to add at least another two inches of topsoil over the entire area of your garden.

Set wooden stakes into the ground on opposite sides of the bed to mark your planting rows. Run a string between each pair of stakes to mark the middle of each row. Make sure to leave enough space between rows to accommodate the plants that will grow there.

Use the handle of your shovel to create a furrowed line in the soil roughly two inches deep beneath each string. Drop your seeds into the furrowed soil with enough space between each seed to prevent competition when the seeds grow into mature plants.

Drag the blade of your shovel over the soil beside each furrow to push soil over the seeds. Do press down on the shovel or step on the rows after the seeds are planted; instead, lightly tamp the loose soil down over the seeds using your shovel.

Watering seeds before they have germinated can compact the surface of the soil and decrease their germination rate. The best time to plant your seeds is when the soil is damp but not saturated from a recent rainstorm.

Wear garden gloves when working in the soil to avoid infection from bacteria in the soil and cuts from the weeds.