Some of the best-tasting food you’ll ever eat can be grown in your backyard. Think of the variety! A ripe, juicy watermelon or a fresh, crisp carrot can add to your meal. The money you can save growing your own versus the grocery store. In addition, you can grow your produce naturally, without enhancers. Following are some tips to help you become an organic gardener:
Your children will enjoy being involved with your organic gardening endeavors. Toiling together in the garden brings your family closer and offers many different opportunities to learn new things and instill green values.
When participating in organic gardening, a great tip is always to wash your containers. This is needed to protect your plants from getting any diseases. It would be best to wash them in warm, soapy water and then rinse using a diluted solution of bleach and water. This will ensure that your plants stay healthy.
Please do not get rid of weeds by pulling them. This takes you time, and they might grow back. If you notice an area with many weeds, take a shovel and dig under it. Turn the soil over so that the weeds feed your seeds as manure would.
Toads can be a gardener’s best friend because of all the troublesome bugs they eat. To attract toads to visit your garden and stay awhile, keep the garden bedding moist and offer some places where they can safely hide from predators of their own. Many gardeners use a valuable trick to place old, broken clay flower pots upside down in the garden to function as a comfy shelter for the hard-working toads.
Use a raised garden bed when planting your plants. Not only does it provide a minor defense against the common vegetable pests, but raised garden beds are also warmer during the spring. The planter becomes warmer because it isn’t surrounded by several inches of isolating ground soil. The warmer climate will result from you being able to plant earlier.
Rotate your crops to prevent permanent populations of pests in your garden. As with any ecosystem, pests need a certain amount of time to nest and build up a proper population within a garden. These pests are especially suited for one environment and one food source. By switching their food source, you can keep your pest population down simply because they cannot adapt to the new type of plant.
Spacing is a critical factor in gardening. When the garden is bare, it is sometimes hard to envision how much space a mature plant needs. The plants will inevitably need to unfurl and spread, but they also need air circulation from open spaces. Plan your garden carefully and leave enough space between the seeds.
If you are experiencing a problem with slugs or other insects, an excellent organic contact pesticide is diatomaceous earth. You can buy this at most garden centers, and it comes in a white powder form. It is an abrasive material that will kill the critters by damaging the skin of the slugs and joints of the insects.
Consider building raised beds. If you build your own raised beds, you can choose the perfect size for your garden, and you can fill it with a type of soil suitable for what you intend to grow. Since there will be minor soil compaction, more oxygen will be in the soil, and water drainage will be much better. The soil in a raised bed warms up much earlier in the spring, increasing the growing season.
Avoid chemicals in your garden. Keep the toxins out of the food and the water supply. One of the best parts about organic gardening is eliminating chemical compounds from your food supply. There are many alternatives to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Almost any problem can be cured with proper management.
You can use something like a laundry basket to gather all of your produce together when the time comes. This will be like a strainer for all your produce. Rinse your produce while it lays in the basket; any excess water strains off through the laundry basket holes.
When planting your organic garden, wear a carpenter’s tool belt around your waist and fill all the pockets with your gardening gloves and tools. This will keep your tools organized and handy for use, and it will also minimize trips back and forth to your shed to retrieve tools you have forgotten to carry with you.
Rotate the plants you grow each year by switching up where you plant them. Planting the same greenery in the same place can cause fungus and disease. These things can get into the ground and attack plants the following year. If you change things and plant your garden in a different area, you will have a way to keep fungus at bay.
If organic gardening is fascinating in, make sure you do your research. There are so many resources available in print and also on the internet. Find out what you need to get started in your organic gardening ventures. It can be fun and rewarding in the end.
Invest in the additional time and effort to create a nourishing compost for your garden. A well-maintained compost can enhance the soil’s consistency, structure, and aeration; it can also improve its ability to draw in and retain water levels. As a bonus, compost can also stimulate the development of healthier roots.
A great time-saving tip is to use both portable and stationary hose reels to store your hoses away in a faster period than the typical hoses that require more time for dragging and storing. Using these hose reels will free up more of your time for other gardening activities.
Follow the above suggestions to help you with your organic garden. Think of the benefits you get by gardening the natural way. Maybe nutrition is your primary concern, or perhaps you are looking for a way to cut costs. Enjoy taking a bit out of that ripe, juicy watermelon or a fresh, crisp carrot!
