Great idea. 

be happy to help.

Someone here who is starting a garden for the first time was wondering about the use of lime in the garden. Also, he was going to put down a layer of plastic first.

I am the neophyte suburban micro-farmer whom our friend Cera has been advising.  Thanks, Cera.

It is a very relaxing hobby and one that affords good, much-needed exercise, and time out in the fresh air and sun.  Digging a foot-deep sunken garden bed is more work than it sounds like it would be!  So far I have put out blackberry bushes, four tomato plants in a raised self-watering bed, and I have five more tomato plants (grown from seed, Rutgers variety) and seven cayenne pepper plants to put out.  I have 20 pounds of dry cat food that are sitting in my garage because our ever-vigilant HOA, that has never seen a functional, practical, enjoyable human activity they didn't want to stamp out, has put a fatwa on feeding feral animals.  I read online that it makes excellent fertilizer, so I am thinking of digging up another few square feet, laying plastic with holes cut in it (the soil is pure sand and water just percolates straight through it), laying the cat food, getting some more potting mix to cover it with, and planting more vegetables.  I even have four speaker boxes --- the speakers are very old and have died --- that I may retrofit into raised beds.

I feel like Oliver Douglas on Green Acres growing corn in flower pots on his Manhattan balcony.  Urban farming has come a long way since then.  I have nobody to make me "hotscakes", but on the other hand, I don't have a Mr Haney trying to mulct me of my pension.

A nice respite both from the theological wars and the posterior-over-teakettle that our society has become in these days of pestilence.

Before he puts down plastic , he needs to test his garden to see if it needs lime.  It might not.  Before plastic, lime and fertilizer. 

However much we've been prepping since 2006, I plan to "up our game" if the world gets through this Coronavirus epidemic and returns to normal.
Our main limitation is SPACE. 5 gallon buckets, TP, and canned goods take up space. And you can't just keep them in a shed (we've tried that). Too much heat and humidity in Texas. They only last a couple years that way. Another limitation is "eat what you store, store what you eat". For the parents at least, that would take a few freezers (for the meat and cheese) and a large garden. We're both on a low-carb diet for health reasons.

My family turns their nose up at almost everything that comes in a can -- kind of frustrating. I'm like, "Pick whatever you want THAT COMES IN A CAN and we'll stock up on that to be prepared." but they prefer fresh, homemade food. I guess we need to prep by getting a herd of cattle, a flock of chickens, and a huge garden and greenhouse?

But getting a garden in order -- that's doable. My latest technique is BACK TO EDEN gardening. Basically it's all about mulch. Between that and Permaculture, I'm learning some good techniques to grow stuff here in the virtual desert.  I finally got some local tree trimmers to keep dumping dump trucks of mulch on my property for free. I even sold my mid-range ($900) wood chipper, since I couldn't see myself using it anymore. Too busy now that I'm full-time employed. It takes hours to process a pile of branches, and you get very little mulch that way.

As an aside, I think we got 6 inches of rain total since Easter 2019. Seriously, we put in a front porch slab on our 2nd building last April, right in the path where runoff water wants to flow on our property. The slab on which the steps were built has a few pipes embedded in the concrete to let the runoff through the slab. I'm still waiting for a "good rain" to test it out! Amazing. Similar to this -- we have a huge man-made pond, which I pumped out last August to water our trees. The water had sat there for months after the rains filled it up Winter 2018/Spring 2019. It's still dry.

Only a few days ago we finally got a couple inches of rain. There's a BIT of water at the bottom of the pond now. Again, that's a serious drought! We're not even getting much rain during the wet "monsoon" season.

I also want to (finally) get a better chicken operation going. It has to be secure though; we have loose/feral dogs in the area. I've lost several flocks of chickens that way.

As an aside, adding compost is the magic solution to EVERY soil problem.

One of the many "cans of worms" in gardening/farming, haha. Don't get me started on vermiculture...

I LOVE COMPOSTING! We have a barrel composter which we empty out prior to spring planting. For the coming few weeks I put fruit and veggie scraps into a blender with lots of water (nothing stringy like celery) and pour the goup into a little trench made by a hoe into the soil. It decomposes really quick that way. I do egg shells separately and put the egg grindings and coffee grounds around the tomatoes.

Let it Rot is the best book on composting.