ORGANIC GARDENING
WELCOME TO OUR
ORGANIC GARDEN
Pictured above, this is our flower garden after about 10 years of using a hands off, let go, organic approach to garden care. The maintenance of this perennial & ornamental shrub bed is about 5 hours per YEAR! Back when we used chemicals and a lot of extra unnecessary labour to care for this garden, it was about 10 hours per WEEK. Once we started feeding the soil and stopped using chemical fertilizers & pest control products, our struggling landscape flourished. The perennial plants spread out vigorously to take over & block out almost all weeds. Some of our plants did not adapt well to our new hands off & waterless techniques, but they were few and the ones that survived, really went to town. As you can see in the photo, this garden that has been watered only twice/year and weeded for maybe one hour/year, never sprayed for bugs or fungus, never given chemical fertilizers is a wild and beautiful creature. It flowers in succession, has no exposed soil to be cultivated, does not have any aphids or spider mites or slugs or any destructive pests that mar its appearance.
The other two characters in the picture; our daughter and baby deer Lucky at one month old, have also been raised organically. As you can clearly see, all three of these beautiful living beings are a testament to to the health benefits of living in a natural green environment.
Even the loose beach stone path maintains itself by getting too hot in the growing season to allow anything to grow. Another pretty cute organic gardening trick.
How To Get Started Growing a Green Toxin Free Garden
Of course everyone knows what organic gardening is these days, and many people are interested in greening up their gardening practices as a way of getting healthier, encouraging organic gardening product manufacturers, helping the earth and the future health of the generations to come. If you are not sure why you need to change your garden to an organic one, you may be interested in reading my article about it entitled:
Some of you may already be ready to make the switch to organic gardening, but think it will take you too many years and too many tears to make the necessary changes. Not so! It's so simple you won't even believe it.
These days, 2009, there are so many great organic gardening products, tools and equipment available to every town & city at big box stores, small boutique organic garden centers, large organic sections of big garden centers and on-line. It's once again, just a matter of buying a natural product and following the directions. Instead of a bag of chemical, petroleum based fertilizer, just choose the organic one. The hard work of research & trial and error are over, thanks to those dedicated organic growers who have blazed the way for the rest of us.
For fertilizer, you will use stuff like compost, rock phosphate, kelp meal, green sand, dolomitic lime and many other natural substances. These can be purchased, separately or in bags already to use, on-line or from organic garden centers. Some of the big box stores now carry organic gardening product alternatives right on the shelf next to the nasty chemical products of days gone by. You can also make your own great living soil amendment by composting your garden & kitchen waste materials. Grass clippings, coffee grounds, table scraps (no meat or bones please), vacuum bag contents, leaves and even those weeds can all just be dumped into your composter. Then a year later, it is your best ever fertilizer to be placed on top of the garden soil.
The biggest concept that you will learn as an organic grower is that YOU FEED THE SOIL and THE PLANTS WILL FEED THEMSELVES.
That's right; you have to think of fertilizing as the feeding of the soil and all the beneficial living things that live in it. Soil is a complex living society of its own in any garden and your plants are really just a product of all the living organisms that live in your soil. As a matter of fact, they MAKE THE SOIL. These organisms turn all kinds of dead organic matter, minerals and nutrients into soil in a form that plants can consume. It's a huge part of the cycle of life here on Earth. In any healthy soil there are a gazillion organisms form microscopic to bug size, that literally make and maintain an environment that is designed by the miracle of nature to support a thriving plant population. The plants & trees that then die or shed leaves, then get turned into soil again by these industrious soil dwellers.
Instead of buying toxic chemical to control bugs, fungi & weeds you can now freely choose from a wide variety of non toxic, safe organic & natural gardening products. Fox Farm & Earth Juice are just 2 of the many companies that were ahead of their time over two decades ago, coming out with safe non toxic green alternatives for organic gardening. The organic gardening industry has expanded tremendously over the years and has lead the way for other agri-chemical manufacturers to make organic changes in their own products. Just use the organic prducts as directed, when directed on the package. The results will be the same as far as you can tell. But what you don't see is how much healthier your vegies & fruit will be. The nutritional value of organic food is far superior as is the flavour. Once you are growing your own, it will be very clear how easy and desirable it is.
Weeds can be easily controlled using mulch or ground cover. There are a number of choices of materials to use. Straw, shredded bark, thick mass, natural fabric like burlap or old cotton blankets & sheets. Even using plastic sheeting is better than spraying herbicides around, but it is best if your mulch is an organic product that will break down to become organic matter in your soil. I saw an interesting piece on a new biodegradable 'plastic' product made from ground up poultry feathers. It looks like thick plastic sheeting and gradually breaks down by exposure to rain, into protein & keratin molecules that are natural components of the earth. I would expect a landscape fabric made out of something like that to show up soon on the shelves of organic garden centers. Heat, from rock paths or an actual flame torch are another great way to hold back the weeds while your plants get a chance to take over the space.
Diseases & insect pests are usually blamed for problems in the fruit & vegie gardens. All those bugs, slugs, blights, cankers and funguses (fungi?) can just destroy your crop with absolutely no yield to reward you for your efforts. So how could anyone possibly garden at all without using a whole arsenal of killer chemicals to kill everything that moves and grows? Again, you will be amazed at how easy & natural it is to garden without all those toxic chemicals. It is those very toxic products that gardeners use in the soil & on their plants that compromises the health of the garden to the point where bugs and diseases can flourish in the first place. A healthy organic plant, raised in a healthy organic soil, will be RESISTANT to diseases and will grow so rapidly and strongly that bugs just can't make a dent in the overall plant. Organic gardeners also try to tip the balance in favour of the plants, beneficial insects & microbial organisms by using natural products, like cinnamon oil or tea tree oil as well as climactic & soil amendments. For example, fireblight, a terrible disease of tomatoes here in coastal BC that can take out a whole crop in three days. Right down to a little pile of grotesquely black and soggy stems lying on the ground where your about to be harvested tomato plant once grew. The organic way to beat this blight, is to know how it thrives and prevent those conditions from existing. This blight needs wet conditions for more than 3 days in a row with no dry breaks. When this condition happens. BAM! Your crop is done for. So, we organic gardeners control fireblight, not by spraying nasty fungicides every week, but by not letting our tomatoes stay wet for more than 2 days. We grow them under a glass roof, with the sides left open for air circulation. This simple method works like a charm and there are many more climactic controls used to remedy a variety of garden problems. For every bug, disease, fungus, weed or virus out there in your garden, there is an organic solution. You will find recent books, magazines and websites that offer blow by blow diagnoses and organic remedies for every garden problem. Gardening is just altering the soil, water and nutrient supply to plants. Making these alterations using organic gardening products is just the same.
I urge you to give it a try. The very first time I set aside my BSc in horticulture & years of traditional agri-training and tried using organic gardening techniques, I was rewarded with the most gorgeous little garden I had ever seen. Bigger & better & more flowers, fruit, flavour & soil health. Everything, was superior, even the worms. And back then, 1980, all I did was put my composted rabbit manure and a couple of hand fulls of bonemeal into the soil, just before I planted. (I nowadays use rock phosphate instead of bonemeal, as bonemeal is derived from toxin laden animal waste products.) That was all I changed that first try at organic gardening, honestly. And what a garden it was!
Some of you may already be ready to make the switch to organic gardening, but think it will take you too many years and too many tears to make the necessary changes. Not so! It's so simple you won't even believe it.
These days, 2009, there are so many great organic gardening products, tools and equipment available to every town & city at big box stores, small boutique organic garden centers, large organic sections of big garden centers and on-line. It's once again, just a matter of buying a natural product and following the directions. Instead of a bag of chemical, petroleum based fertilizer, just choose the organic one. The hard work of research & trial and error are over, thanks to those dedicated organic growers who have blazed the way for the rest of us.
For fertilizer, you will use stuff like compost, rock phosphate, kelp meal, green sand, dolomitic lime and many other natural substances. These can be purchased, separately or in bags already to use, on-line or from organic garden centers. Some of the big box stores now carry organic gardening product alternatives right on the shelf next to the nasty chemical products of days gone by. You can also make your own great living soil amendment by composting your garden & kitchen waste materials. Grass clippings, coffee grounds, table scraps (no meat or bones please), vacuum bag contents, leaves and even those weeds can all just be dumped into your composter. Then a year later, it is your best ever fertilizer to be placed on top of the garden soil.
The biggest concept that you will learn as an organic grower is that YOU FEED THE SOIL and THE PLANTS WILL FEED THEMSELVES.
That's right; you have to think of fertilizing as the feeding of the soil and all the beneficial living things that live in it. Soil is a complex living society of its own in any garden and your plants are really just a product of all the living organisms that live in your soil. As a matter of fact, they MAKE THE SOIL. These organisms turn all kinds of dead organic matter, minerals and nutrients into soil in a form that plants can consume. It's a huge part of the cycle of life here on Earth. In any healthy soil there are a gazillion organisms form microscopic to bug size, that literally make and maintain an environment that is designed by the miracle of nature to support a thriving plant population. The plants & trees that then die or shed leaves, then get turned into soil again by these industrious soil dwellers.
Instead of buying toxic chemical to control bugs, fungi & weeds you can now freely choose from a wide variety of non toxic, safe organic & natural gardening products. Fox Farm & Earth Juice are just 2 of the many companies that were ahead of their time over two decades ago, coming out with safe non toxic green alternatives for organic gardening. The organic gardening industry has expanded tremendously over the years and has lead the way for other agri-chemical manufacturers to make organic changes in their own products. Just use the organic prducts as directed, when directed on the package. The results will be the same as far as you can tell. But what you don't see is how much healthier your vegies & fruit will be. The nutritional value of organic food is far superior as is the flavour. Once you are growing your own, it will be very clear how easy and desirable it is.
Weeds can be easily controlled using mulch or ground cover. There are a number of choices of materials to use. Straw, shredded bark, thick mass, natural fabric like burlap or old cotton blankets & sheets. Even using plastic sheeting is better than spraying herbicides around, but it is best if your mulch is an organic product that will break down to become organic matter in your soil. I saw an interesting piece on a new biodegradable 'plastic' product made from ground up poultry feathers. It looks like thick plastic sheeting and gradually breaks down by exposure to rain, into protein & keratin molecules that are natural components of the earth. I would expect a landscape fabric made out of something like that to show up soon on the shelves of organic garden centers. Heat, from rock paths or an actual flame torch are another great way to hold back the weeds while your plants get a chance to take over the space.
Diseases & insect pests are usually blamed for problems in the fruit & vegie gardens. All those bugs, slugs, blights, cankers and funguses (fungi?) can just destroy your crop with absolutely no yield to reward you for your efforts. So how could anyone possibly garden at all without using a whole arsenal of killer chemicals to kill everything that moves and grows? Again, you will be amazed at how easy & natural it is to garden without all those toxic chemicals. It is those very toxic products that gardeners use in the soil & on their plants that compromises the health of the garden to the point where bugs and diseases can flourish in the first place. A healthy organic plant, raised in a healthy organic soil, will be RESISTANT to diseases and will grow so rapidly and strongly that bugs just can't make a dent in the overall plant. Organic gardeners also try to tip the balance in favour of the plants, beneficial insects & microbial organisms by using natural products, like cinnamon oil or tea tree oil as well as climactic & soil amendments. For example, fireblight, a terrible disease of tomatoes here in coastal BC that can take out a whole crop in three days. Right down to a little pile of grotesquely black and soggy stems lying on the ground where your about to be harvested tomato plant once grew. The organic way to beat this blight, is to know how it thrives and prevent those conditions from existing. This blight needs wet conditions for more than 3 days in a row with no dry breaks. When this condition happens. BAM! Your crop is done for. So, we organic gardeners control fireblight, not by spraying nasty fungicides every week, but by not letting our tomatoes stay wet for more than 2 days. We grow them under a glass roof, with the sides left open for air circulation. This simple method works like a charm and there are many more climactic controls used to remedy a variety of garden problems. For every bug, disease, fungus, weed or virus out there in your garden, there is an organic solution. You will find recent books, magazines and websites that offer blow by blow diagnoses and organic remedies for every garden problem. Gardening is just altering the soil, water and nutrient supply to plants. Making these alterations using organic gardening products is just the same.
I urge you to give it a try. The very first time I set aside my BSc in horticulture & years of traditional agri-training and tried using organic gardening techniques, I was rewarded with the most gorgeous little garden I had ever seen. Bigger & better & more flowers, fruit, flavour & soil health. Everything, was superior, even the worms. And back then, 1980, all I did was put my composted rabbit manure and a couple of hand fulls of bonemeal into the soil, just before I planted. (I nowadays use rock phosphate instead of bonemeal, as bonemeal is derived from toxin laden animal waste products.) That was all I changed that first try at organic gardening, honestly. And what a garden it was!
Nowadays there are lots & lots more options to make growing an organic garden easy, but really, it's a very simple and natural way for plants to grow and they will co-operate with your efforts enthusiastically.
- You have nothing to lose, and so much to gain:
- Your health
- Your enjoyment of the extra delicious flavour of organic food, including the lessening of the need to put salt on everything.
- Your gardens' big yield increase
- Your contribution to the future
- Your support for natural gardening product businesses
-Your satisfaction in watching a truly magnificent garden grow because you did it right!
- You have nothing to lose, and so much to gain:
- Your health
- Your enjoyment of the extra delicious flavour of organic food, including the lessening of the need to put salt on everything.
- Your gardens' big yield increase
- Your contribution to the future
- Your support for natural gardening product businesses
-Your satisfaction in watching a truly magnificent garden grow because you did it right!
THREE CHEERS TO YOUR TRULY GREEN THUMBS
Jean Green
Jean Green
FOLLOW MY ORGANIC GARDENING JOURNAL STARTING MAR 5, 2009 STEP BY STEP VEGIE GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS....GO
MY RECIPE FOR DRY MIX ORGANIC FLOWER & VEGETABLE FERTILIZER ...GO
SHOP FOR ORGANIC GARDENING PRODUCTS
at GREEN JEANS ORGANIC EVERYTHING STORE
SHOP FOR ORGANIC SEEDS & PLANTS