Thursday, September 4, 2008

Growing a Organic Garden

Time to start planning for your organic garden. Here are some things you will need and some things that will be helpful but not really necessary.
Things you need:

A place to plant:
Now you may already have a spot in mind. If you do great! Make sure you keep an eye on it while your getting ready to start your garden. What are you looking for things like Drainage, Sun to shade exposure and maybe local visitors such as rabbits squirrels ect. This will give you an indication to what work might be involved and which plants to put in your garden plot.
Seeds
Well DuH!! Of course you need then what else are you going to grow. Why on earth do I need to mention this? I’ll tell you why, NOT all Seeds are organic. Some every have pesticides wrapped around the seed so they won’t get eaten by pests. Some have been Genitical Modified. With nonorganic seeds you don't know what your getting. What was sprayed on the plant before it was harvested for seed? With organic seed what you see is what you get.


Tools
• Spade or garden shovel to turn over your garden, planting large plants and spreading compost, mulch and moving soil around.


• Trowel for digging small holes for seeds and seedlings.
• Gardening gloves to protect your hands. Just about every gardener loves a good
• Hoses, nozzles, and sprinklers to get the water where you want it. Drip hoses are your best bet for getting the water right where you need it. But if you cant afford the amount of hose you need for your garden check out your garden store and find the one that fits the shape of your garden best for minimal water waste.
Fertilizers
While there are many organic fertilizers you can use in your local garden store like Fish or bone meal and dried manure (yeah that’s right POOP for your garden) I think the best fertilizer is compost. Now I’ve made a post before about compost and I have a free video at the bottom from Youtube to help you get started. But if you don’t want to make your own then you can buy that too. Why do I think Compost is the best. Compost is natures way of returning materials to the earth to be reused. It helps your whole garden by supporting the wildlife that helps keep your garden healthy.


Some other items you might want to include in your gardening tools but aren’t really necessary are:
• Hoe to help cultivate between the rows of vegetables and remove weeds
• Pots to start your seeds earlier then if you just plant outside. Also good if you only have a small space and want to do a container garden.
• Hand cultivator are tiny hand held rakes made for digging aound your plants to aerate soil and get rid of weeds.


• Bulb planter if you are looking to do onions potatoes, garlic or any other type bulb plant this tool can help you did just the right size hole .
• A garden cart is very useful if you have a large garden or a large yard. You can use them to haul around your tools, plants, materials for composting small children, and anything else you need to move.

If you want more Here are a couple of great resources to check out:

Organic Food Gardening for Beginners

Organic Vegetable Gardening

Organic Vegetable Gardening At Home.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have found an excellent resource for drip hoses at Dripworks as well as many other drip irrigation products. They even have a free design service if drip irrigation is completely new to you. I requested a free catalog last year and finally got my system ordered and up and running this year.

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