Welcome

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Organic gardening has always been a popular activity and there is no shortage of information available. There are thousands of websites and blogs which deal with these topics. The problem with so much information is that a person can easily become overwhelmed with information overload.

We hope that this site will help you develope your own green thumb and that the information here will allow you to enjoy the full potential of gardening. But be forewarned. There is a danger you might just become a slave to your garden. Perhaps Lewis Gannit had it right when he penned: ”Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.”

Planning Your Garden

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Your first task is choosing where to plant your garden. The site should receive at least six hours of direct sunlight daily, and the soil should drain well, with no standing puddles. The area should receive adequate air circulation, yet be protected from strong winds. Your house or a thicket of trees can act as a shield from the wind.

After choosing your site, decide how large you want to make your garden. Beware of beginning too ambitiously; tending a plot that’s too large can quickly become a chore. A plot 10 feet long by 10 feet wide is large enough for some tomato plants, lettuce, a bush variety of cucumber plant, radishes, an endlessly productive zucchini plant, herbs and some flowers.

Starting Your Seeds Indoors

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Starting your seeds indoors will lessen the amount of time you have to wait to see results in your garden, and many people prefer to grow their plants indoors first to ready them for the growing season. It can be motivational and satisfying.

Almost any container with drainage holes in the bottom will work for planting. Paper milk cartons cut in half, Styrofoam cups, tin cans, plastic trays and pots are common containers used. For convenience, however, you may wish to start plants in the plastic trays and pots available at garden supply centers.

Preparing The Soil

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Proper soil preparation is the key to successful organic gardening. The goal is to feed the soil, which in turn will feed your plants. Begin by testing your soil to find out precisely what you’ve got to work with. Contact your local Cooperative Extension Service. Most counties and some universities have one; look in the phone book under “Cooperative,” “Extension” or your county name to find out what is required for a soil test. Home test kits are available at garden-supply stores, but their results are not as accurate or complete.

A soil test will measure pH, the soil’s acidity or alkalinity. The recommended pH for a vegetable garden is 6.8. The test results should include guidelines for adjusting the pH, for example, how much lime to add to acid soils or how much sulphur to add to alkaline soils. Both are available at gardening centres.

Planting Your Garden

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You can choose to buy plants that are already growing that can be found at most garden centers, but if you do this, you can’t be sure what pesticides have come in contact with these plants. Your goal, as an organic gardener, is to avoid these chemicals, so we recommend starting your garden from seed.

If you want to simply plant the seeds directly in the ground, that’s fine, just remember that growing from seed takes a little more time than growing from plants, so be patient. Many beginners will take a seed packet and dump its contents into the ground hoping a few plants will spring up. What they don’t realize
is that with care, they will probably ALL come up – or at least most of them.

Watering Your Garden

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You’ve spent quite a bit time and effort to make sure your garden is laid out in the most promising way and considering how best to grow that garden organically. Now you need to take care of your plot.

Plants need light and water to grow. The light is already taken care of by Mother Nature; you have to take
care of the water!

Weed Control

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Weeds can be an organic gardener’s curse. Actually, for all gardeners, weeds are the bane of their existence in some cases. This author absolutely detests weeding her garden, but it must be done to promote healthy growth of plants and insure a good crop.

Even if you’re not an organic gardener, weed control is a problem. There really is no easy answer to this problem. It just takes time and effort to control the unwanted overgrowth in your garden. This is where mulching and composting come into play.

First of all, twice a week, run the edge of a sharp hoe just under the surface of the soil to behead tiny weeds before they grow large enough to compete with your seedlings.