Well you can leave your weeds and start fresh in spring time,or start digging to turn soil over now.Sunflowers will be happy there with all that sun..big smiles

How much work are you willing to put into it? The absolute best thing you can do is to dig out the existing soil down to a depth of a couple of feet and mix it all up with lots of compost or other organic matter and dump it back in. In the spring you'll have the best possible bed to plant in. If you plan on planting mature perennials or shrubs, this is the ideal way of preparing the bed.

But that's a heck of a lot of work :-). You can take several shortcuts and still have a decent bed. You can dig and mix to a shallower depth, with the understanding that the deeper you dig and mix the better. The laziest thing you can do and still improve the soil to some extent is to dump 6" or so of compost on top of the bed and allow the worms to eventually mix it into the underlaying soil. Depending on what your existing soil is like this can take anywhere from a few months to a few years - you can plant smaller perennials right away and they'll probably grow just fine, but they will not really thrive until the soil is all mixed in.

Sunflowers would grow just fine in that bed and would tolerate the lazy way of improving the soil much better than perennials would. If you want to be lazy and keep adding a few inches of compost every year, you will eventually build up a nice bed - then you can plant whatever you want:-)

BP

Thank you folks!

Sounds like lot's of fun... Sunflowers grow nicely anywhere!! I am in Edmonton and have 2 very large 60 foot pine and spruce trees in my back yard.. The grass hardly grows under there.. To my surprise this summer ( I have a birdfeeder there) a handful of beautiful sunflowers bloomed!! Must have come from the birdseed.. I have been wondering what the heck would grow under there.. now my question has been answered.. Also try petunias.. they grow anywhere as well... happy gardening