Organic Gardening: A Getting Started Guide

Organic Gardening: A Getting Started Guide

Organic gardening? The practice of growing fruits, vegetables and flowers without the aid of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is a way of gardening in harmony with nature by treating your garden as a small part of a natural system rather than an isolated event.

Organic gardening takes into account all living things: plants, insects, animals, bacteria, people and so on. Organic gardeners seek to minimize damage to any resource and work to replace and maximize the resources their gardening activities consume.

Anyone can become an organic gardener because everyone has access to the kitchen waste and dead plant material needed to make compost, which is the basis of the organic approach to creating and supporting healthy soil, and healthy soil makes healthy plants. Indeed, a favorite motto of organic gardeners is “Feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants.”  Adding organic matter such as compost improves the texture of sandy and clay soils alike and helps provide a strong breeding ground for the microorganisms that create nutrients for the soil.

===================
ORGANIC GARDENING made easy

with Lee O’Hara
Director Kathy Smith
www.organichomegardener.com
===================

Another part of organic gardening involves making appropriate choices in the plants you grow. Choosing plants that are either native to the region and climate in which you live or well adapted to it severely reduces the need to repel pests and protect plants beyond normal care. Such plants have evolved natural defenses that make them less vulnerable to pests and other problems.

When you garden organically, you develop a willingness to share some of your food with other creatures, garden pests included. Organic produce rarely looks as jaw dropping beautiful as the uniform, perfectly shaped fruits and vegetables you see in advertisements and commercials, but then it hasn’t been sprayed with chemicals and gassed or otherwise unnaturally colored, either. Wouldn’t you rather share the occasional apple with a worm than to eat only apples no bug would touch?

However, gardening organically doesn’t mean you have to allow insects and other pests to eat everything your garden grows, either. It does mean that you will use only non-chemical methods to protect your plants from undue predation, such as creating barriers such as floating row covers that prevent moths from landing on plants and laying their eggs there, or plant “collars” made from aluminum that prevent cutworms from gaining a foothold.

======================================
Garden Tip...

The earth in vases of plants that stand out in exposed places, will rapidly dry out; if shells or fine gravel is laid over the surface of the soil, they will prevent it from "baking" after watering, and hold the moisture much longer than without. Try it.
~ James Sheehan
======================================
Because organic gardening considers all of nature, it also involves encourages the presence of beneficial insects and other garden “visitors.” Ladybugs, for example, have a tremendous appetite for aphids. Butterflies are an essential factor in plant pollination. Birds can eat their body’s weight in grubs and slugs in an amazingly short time span.

It is more work to garden organically? Not really. It’s just a way of raising plants that considers your garden as a part of the universe rather than the center of it.

Many people take great pride from organic gardening. It can also save you a ton of money. Have you ever priced organic produce at the market? It always costs more to purchase organic, but lucky for you, it doesn’t cost more to grow it!

======================================
Garden Tip...

There are many different species and varieties of Lilies, but none approach those known as Japan Lilies in the beauty and variety of their flowers, and their exquisite fragrance. They are perfectly hardy, and the fall is the proper time to plant them. If good strong bulbs are set out in the ground in October or November, planted about eight inches deep, they will throw up strong shoots the following summer, and bloom freely. The flowers increase in size and beauty with the age of the bulb, and this should be left to grow undisturbed in the same spot for five or six years; afterwards, if desired, the bulbs can be dug up, the offshoots removed, and the old bulbs reset, and they will do better than ever. Any of the young bulbs that have been removed can be planted out in the ground, and in a few years will form good blooming bulbs. The time to perform this work is in the fall.
~ James Sheehan
======================================

Around the web organic gardening talk and tips…

Achieving Healthy Results with the Use of Organic Gardening …

Vegetable gardening is highly susceptible to pest and disease infestation and to prevent this, a reliable measure for protection is needed. For this, organic gardening vegetable supplies are still the most viable and effective medium …

Ultimate Guide About What Exactly Organic Gardening Means

Mix composted manures, bone meal and other organic fertilizers into your soil as well. Your lawn, vegetable garden and flowering plants will each need different types of fertilizer, so learning which plants grow best in which type of …

Organic gardening indoors = fresh tomatoes year round

With these tips there is no reason to deny yourself a little freshness even in the dead of winter. [via: The Vegetable Patch]. Organic gardening indoors = fresh tomatoes year round originally appeared on Green Daily on Wed, …

Organic Vegetable Garden Basics

The first thing you have to know is what is organic vegetable gardening? It is simply a way of farming that does not use any synthetic products which includes fertilizers and pesticides. In short, you work with nature to get what you …

Requisites Of An Organic Vegetable Garden

In deciding upon the site for the organic vegetable garden it is well to dispose once and for all of the old idea that the garden “patch” must be an ugly spot in the home surroundings. If thoughtfully planned, carefully planted and …

Sphere: Related Content