Category: Organic Gardening

Jul 22 2009

Organic Vegetable Gardening

Successful organic vegetable gardening requires long drawn plans. This includes the preparation of the soil, enriching it and protecting it from the attacks of harmful insects. Organic vegetable gardening differs from the conventional vegetable gardening in two major ways: - usage of fertilizers and pest control. The fertility of the soil depends upon three components: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Nitrogen intensifies the growth of lush green foliage. Phosphorus results in strong roots and stems. Potassium protects the plants from disease and cold. It is required for every plant that stays alive for more than a year. In conventional methods, synthetic fertilizers are used to enrich the soil. Commercial fertilizers are available as a mixture of the three main ingredients. However, in organic vegetable gardening, these nutrients are added in a different manner.

Compost is a very good organic way of enriching the soil. Compost can be made easily in pits in your backyard with garden and kitchen refuse. Materials like leaves, lawn cuttings, pine needles, weeds, corn stalk, carrot tops, spoiled fruit and vegetable, animal manure etc. can be used to make good compost. The decomposition of the organic material forms bacteria and fungi in the soil. They help in converting unavailable nutrients like nitrogen to ammonia and nitrates, forms usable by the plants. This process is called nitrification. Rock phosphates, natural occurring deposits of phosphorus in combination with calcium, can be mixed with the compost. Natural potassium occurs in substances like wood ashes, tobacco stems, seaweed, potash salts and ground rock potash. They can be also mixed to the compost. This combination will provide a very balanced nutrient mix for organic vegetable gardening.

The organic material takes longer to decompose and affect the soil. Hence it should be added at least a fortnight before planting the vegetables.

The pH scale runs from 0 to 14. 0 indicates extreme acidic, 14 is extreme alkaline and 7 indicates a neutral soil. The most inexpensive and efficient material for raising the pH is ground limestone. Dolomite limestone has an additional ingredient, magnesium, which many soils lack. If the pH of the soil is alkaline, finely ground sulphur is used to lower it. Pest control in organic gardens is done in a different manner. Organic vegetable gardening believes in the theory of manageable pest levels. In this, the pests are not completely eradicated but kept at an easily manageable level maintaining the balance.

Pest resistant varieties are planted. Natural predators and parasites are used that eat up the harmful insects. Mulch the soil to avoid direct contact with sunlight as the harmful organisms require bright sunlight to grow. These methods using organic vegetable gardening techniques will help in raising a healthy and abundant crop.

Nov 29 2008

Organic Gardening Gifts Online

Organic Gardening
Anna Hart asked:


Organic gardening gifts online are plentiful and, with a bit of imagination, can be found in highly unlikely places. You can, of course, give organically grown flowers - a bunch of roses or a wildflower bouquet. You can give an organic live plant, nicely displayed in a natural basket. You might even give a gift of organic tea.

Organic gardening gifts online don’t stop there, though. As the popularity of organic gardening grows, the number of gifts for the gardener also grows.

Organic Gardening Tools

Organic gardening calls for tools that chemical gardening does not. Anyone doing organic gardening will enjoy receiving unique tools. For example:

1. Compost Container: Small-scale organic gardening does not require a large compost pile. A compost container, made from recycled plastic, can recycle kitchen waste into organic compost without a compost pit or pile.

2. Worm Factory: This organic gardening gift is another efficient way to compost. Just put worms, their bedding, and some scraps of food in the worm factory’s bottom bin. Stack other bins on top, with more food scraps in each. As the worms finish their meal on the first floor, they move upward to get more food. Their castings in the bottom tray, an excellent organic fertilizer, can be harvested. A handy spigot on the bottom tray drains off compost tea.

3. Compost Crank: If your gardener does use a compost pile or pit, a compost crank makes a good organic gardening gift. He or she will simply have to crank the corkscrew tip into the pile and pull out to aerate the pile.

Earth-Friendly Organic Gardening Tools

Organic gardening gifts online also include some regular tools that are earth-friendly. Think of mowing the lawn with a push mower to reduce pollution. While pushing, wear lawn aerator shoes to keep the lawn aerated so that nutrition and water get down where the roots can use them. Someone who is “into” organic gardening will also appreciate a tree and shrub root irrigator kit. It saves water while being sure organic fruit trees and shrubs receive deep watering.

Ergonomic Organic Gardening Tools

Organic gardening requires more work than chemical gardening. Ergonomic tools will be appreciated by an organic gardener. Sets of ergonomic tools with a convenient canvas bag can be found at many online gardening supply stores.

We found a unique organic gardening gift online - an ergonomic gardening tool called a detachable ergonomic gardening tool set. One handle can be used with every tool in the set.

A wearable gardening stool lets your organic gardening friend rest feet and back while gardening. Even with hands full, the stool is always available.

Organic Gardening Seeds or Seedlings

Organic gardening gifts online include organic seeds or seedlings, too. A home window garden kit set we saw would be a great gift for an organic gardener. Each set has four window garden cans, with everything you need to grow organic seedlings on a window sill. You add water and sunlight, and transplant the plants when they are big enough.

Any organic seeds or seedlings would be a good organic gardening gift. Herbs are always nice - fragrant and useful.

Organic Gardening Books

A book or two on organic gardening is a good idea, especially for the beginner. Find a beautiful and informative book, and your organic gardener will spend happy hours reading.

Organic Vegetables Mail Order

An ongoing gift of organic vegetables by mail order is also good. Find one of the online organic sites that ship via next day in the U.S.

Just for Love

One organic gardening gift we found online would be fun to give, especially to someone you love. The “Amazing Message Plant” comes in its own planter, ready to grow. The recipient pops the lid, waters the plant, and places it in a sunny location. As it grows, the plant reveals the message “I love you” on its leaves.

Can’t Decide What to Buy

It can be hard to choose just the right organic gardening gift. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. If you can’t decide what to buy, check online gardening supply retailers for gift certificates. You can often get them in denominations of $25 or $50. Order one or more, and place them in a nice organic gardener’s greeting card.



Michael
Nov 14 2008

5 Tips To Make Organic Gardening Easier

Organic Gardening
Cindy Mauro asked:


Organic gardening has many advantages and this article will offer you 5 tips to make organic gardening easier.

Organic Gardening Tip #1:

Mulch your trees and flower beds with 3″ of organic material. When you use this organic gardening tip you will be able to add humus and nutrients. You can also conserve water and keep weeds at bay. If you are growing plants that need acid you can use a thick layer of pine needles. Organic gardening with pine needle mulch will be perfect if used in the fall because over the course of the winter they will decompose and the needed acid will be added naturally to the soil.

Organic Gardening Tip #2:

You need to maintain healthy soil if you want to be successful at organic gardening. The most important step in maintaining healthy soil while engaged in organic gardening is to keep on top of pest management. When pests are controlled in organic gardening the plants will be healthy and more able to withstand insect and disease damage. If you are bothered while organic gardening with aphids you can spray the infested leaves, stems and buds with a diluted solution of soapy water followed with clear water.

Organic Gardening Tip #3:

Try composting as part of your organic gardening regimen. When you make composting part of organic gardening you will improve the texture, soil structure and aeration. Composting also increases the capacity for the soil to hold water. There are organic and natural ways to fertilize when you are organic gardening. Try these instead of chemical fertilizers.

Organic Gardening Tip #4:

Organic gardening gardeners should always keep in mind the best plants for their soil, sun, temperature range and shade. All these factors come into play while organic gardening. Choosing well-adapted plant types is a way to ensure successful organic gardening. When you landscape your yard using organic gardening strategies you can increase your original investment by as much as 200%.

Organic Gardening Tips #5:

Organic gardening shade gardens are low maintenance. You will need less water and have fewer weeds to deal with. Speaking of weeds; try using full-strength household vinegar on a sunny day. Just spray on the plants and you have an organic gardening solution that is safe for people, pets, wildlife and the environment.

These organic gardening tips should come in handy for all organic gardeners, novice or experienced alike.



Wyatt
Nov 10 2008

Organic Gardening - A Speech For Teachers

Organic Gardening
Anna Hart asked:


Organic gardening has increasingly become an important part of the curriculum in schools around the world. Teachers at every grade level find themselves teaching it to students, and sometimes being called on to give a speech to a group of parents. As a career educator and principal, I know the difficulty of opening up time for speech preparation, and offer this organic gardening speech for your use. Feel free to edit it to fit your needs.

Organic Gardening Speech

How selfish are you? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, how selfish would you rate yourself? If you are the least bit selfish, you might be interested in organic gardening.

An organic gardening speech might seem more appropriate coming from a Home Economics teacher, but I am just selfish enough that I love organic gardening. I want to share that love with you and with your children.

Imagine

I want you to come with me, in imagination, to a time and place before the Industrial Revolution. The year is 1707. It is late summer. We find ourselves walking the streets of a small town. Houses are spaced well apart for privacy. Land stretches out behind each house. As we look, we notice that much of that land is taken up by gardens. Here and there, we see both adults and children actively engaged in gardening. The plants are beautiful.

You call to one of the adults and ask what they use to make the garden so lush. A broad smile breaks, and through the smile come the words, “Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants.”

You shake your head. Poor people. Too bad they don’t know about that miracle combination of chemicals you saw advertised on TV last week. That’s the easy way to grow spectacular plants!

Dinner

The organic gardener invites us to join them for the evening meal, and we accept. At dinner, we join in the prayer of thanks, and then watch in amazement as the children, one after another, begin eating fresh vegetables.

You yourself are not that fond of vegetables, but you politely take a small serving of each. You bite into a leaf of steamed cabbage, and your eyes open wide in amazement. It is sweet - twice as sweet as the cabbage you buy at your local market! You watch a small child fill his mouth with dark green kale, and shudder. There’s a small spoonful of the nasty vegetable on your own plate, and you pick at it, putting a single small leaf in your mouth. Amazing! It, too, is twice as sweet as any kale you ever ate. The same seems true of every vegetable on the table. You decide that if your supermarket vegetables were this good, you would eat a lot more of them.

Our imaginary trip ends at that dinner table, and we return to the present.



Organic Gardening’s Benefits

Organic gardening has many benefits. If you are completely selfish, you will want those benefits for yourself. If you are unselfish, you will want those benefits for your family. Let me give you just three of organic gardening’s benefits.

1. Taste: Organic gardening has been proven to produce tastier fruits and vegetables. A Hong Kong study measured Brix levels, the percentage of sugar in plant juices, using produce from organic gardening and from non-organic gardening. The results showed that organic gardening produced produce that was 2 to 4 times as sweet as that produced by non-organic gardening. Sweeter fruits and vegetables are tastier, and easier to eat, whether you are a young person or an adult. Organic gardening helps us eat better by providing tastier fruits and vegetables.

2. Nutrition: Organic gardening has also been found to provide nutritionally superior produce. Virginia Worthington, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, compared the composition of vegetables grown simultaneously under different farming conditions. Her work included 41 studies with 1,240 comparisons of 35 vitamins and minerals. Worthington found that organic gardening produced vegetables and fruits that were higher in most minerals and vitamins than those from non-organic gardening. Not only that, organic gardening produce was lower in potentially harmful nitrates, which result from nitrogen fertilizers. Dr. Worthington concluded that produce from organic gardening is nutritionally superior. You and your family will enjoy better health with fruits and vegetables from organic gardening. (Effect of Agricultural Methods on Nutritional Quality: A Comparison of Organic with Conventional Crops, Virginia Worthington MS, ScD, CNS, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1998, Alternative Therapies, Volume 4, 1998, pages 58-69)

3. Exercise: Finally, organic gardening offers you and your children regular daily exercise in the outdoors. Organic gardening helps you build muscles, especially important core muscles. Organic gardening gets you into the sunlight where you can absorb essential vitamin D. Organic gardening is a great stress management tool. Organic gardening gives you an outlet for creativity. It provides satisfaction as you see your work produce useful fruits, herbs, and vegetables.

We could talk about the aesthetic pleasures of organic gardening - how beautiful that garden might become. We could talk about how you can save money with organic gardening - growing your produce instead of purchasing.

Finally, we could talk about how important it is for our children to learn about organic gardening, to embrace it as the way to better health, and to practice it with school, home, and community gardens.

An organic gardening speech could go on for hours, but I’m going to stop here, hoping that I have whetted your appetite enough that you will seek out more information on organic gardening.

Helpful Tip for Speech-givers

A few large bowls of beautiful organic produce can be set on the platform or around the room to help visual learners picture organic gardening.



Anthony
Nov 06 2008

Organic Gardening - a Quick Introduction

Organic Gardening
Dale Martin asked:


There are many types of organic gardening, from organic vegetable gardening to organic flower gardening. Many people have no idea what organic gardening really is. Organic Gardening refers to growing plants, vegetables, etc. without using pesticides or other harmful chemicals.

Many people believe that organic gardening offers many health benefits and that organically grown food is much better for the human body than food grown with pesticides and chemicals. With such health concerns in place, it only makes sense to grow your fruits and vegetables organically in your very own organic home garden.

If you would like to learn how to have your own organic garden but are unsure of where to start, you are in luck. I have compiled a few easy organic gardening tips for you to follow to get you started off on the right foot.

Collect Your Own Rainwater

This seems like a weird thing to do, but it is actually one of the best tips for organic gardening. For this procedure you will need to purchase a couple barrels from your local hardware store. These barrels will be used to collect rainwater. By collecting rainwater you are conserving water resources instead of wasting it. Some organic gardening growers hook up elaborate system of piping and hose to their rain collection barrels and the system then waters the organic garden automatically. You can probably find a variety of instructions for these types of systems by searching Google. If you don want to get that elaborate you can easily use a small bucket to scoop the water from the barrels or better yet, get a barrel with a spout on it, to water your organic garden by hand.

All Natural Fertilizer

Fertilizer is the place where most organic gardening growers go wrong. You must choose your fertilizer carefully. Many brands of fertilizer produced today contain some type of chemical. Be sure to read the label for the list of ingredients. True organic gardening must use an all natural fertilizer. Even if it says All Natural on the bag, make sure you read the label for the ingredients.

Another source of great natural fertilizer for organic gardening can come from using compost. Compost will help improve the structure of your soil and at the same time help increase the soils water retaining abilities. The best part about using compost for organic gardening is that it is free if you have your own compost pile or box. If not, you can always start one by beginning to collect grass clipping, leaves, etc.

Mulch for Organic Gardening

A simple yet often overlooked tip for organic gardening is to use mulch. By using organic material to mulch around your flower beds and trees you will conserve water, add humus and nutrients, and discourage weeds. This is one of the easiest organic gardening tips there is. Just be certain to locate a suitable natural organic mulch to do the job. You should be able to find one at your local home store or at a large nursery.

There are really no downsides to organic gardening. It is simply a matter of you putting in the time and consideration to make the switch from regular gardening to organic gardening. Not only will you be producing more healthy and nutritious plants and food but you will also be doing your part for the environment by not using chemicals or pesticides that do damage to it. Everything is going Green these days, so you might as well jump on the band wagon and help save the environment and a simple way to start is through organic gardening.



Gavin
Oct 30 2008

How do you plan and grow an organic vegetable and herb garden?

Organic Gardening
millylouise asked:


I want to have my very own organic vegetable and herb garden for my family and my consumption. Please share with me how to do so. Thank you in advance.

Olivia
Oct 25 2008

An Alternative Way of Gardening: The Organic Garden

Organic Gardening
Hank Gordon asked:


A lot of people seem to think that an organic garden is just for hippies and vegetarians. They think it is a difficult and hard way to grow vegetables and flowers while in fact they could not have been further from the truth. Having an organic garden is not difficult at all and it certainly is not just for hippies and vegetarians. When you know that most organic fertilizers are made from animal products you will understand that vegetarians need to be very careful with organic gardening.

Owning a organic garden is not hard at all the only thing where you should be aware of is that you do not use synthesized products. You can use normal seeds and plants they do not need to be organic at all. The only seeds you can not use are genetically modified seeds.

The same people who think that having an organic garden makes you a hippie also often think that your organic garden needs to be animal friendly. Well most gardeners also those who have an organic garden are not always the greatest friends of the local wildlife. And be honest would you be, when your carefully grown crops are being eaten by some rabbits?

There are all kind of gardeners and those that have a organic garden will never use chemicals or pesticides but some are known to shoot a rabbit occasionally, to scare it away or to eat it. A more natural meal is hard to find.

Is an organic garden the same as a natural garden?

A natural garden does not exist, every garden is in fact artificial when you are the one that decides what to grow and at what place in contrary to nature where nothing is planned. a organic garden is not a natural garden if we have land where we let nature do its thing we usually do not call it a garden we call it wasteland. In our gardens we like to decide what are considered weeds and what we consider to be plants or flowers and a organic garden is no different. If our organic garden is suffering from drought you would be crazy not to water those carefully planted flowers and vegetables. As you can see an organic garden also takes some unnatural growing methods.

Vegetarians who own a organic garden should be aware that many of the

fertilizers and other organic garden products contain animal products like fish oil, leather and bone. They need to read all the ingredients on these products.

Although it is not necessary to call your garden an organic garden a very good and “natural” way to control bugs and pest is to mix specific plants together, if you do some research you learn that by placing for example onions and carrots together you will reduce pests and insects. Sometimes you can even use certain weeds to repel bugs and pests. You can also use insects like ladybugs to reduce louse, the ladybugs eat the louse and your organicly grown roses will be more beautiful then ever.



Claire
Oct 25 2008

organic gardening Att garden’s?

Organic Gardening
teen_ x asked:


Need some help I want to start an organic garden but down in South Carolina we have red clay here whats best way to get good soil for garden or organic garden

Claire
Oct 23 2008

leaf hoppers in organic garden?

Organic Gardening
samekid480 asked:


What can I do, they are everywhere? I’ve already used a concoction of dish soap, red pepper, oil and water. I watched them return unfazed as soon as the leaves dried. I’ve heard row covers, but that is expensive and isn’t it way too hot for row covers now? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
I was checking around to find where to buy a praying mantis and ran across this. Poor lil humming bird……praying mantis is eating him. Hhttp://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/site/backyardbirds/hummingbirds/mantis-hummer.aspx?sc=birdwireJul2005Here is the link if you want to see it, it’s gross.

Jennifer
Oct 19 2008

directions on how to grow organic vegetables?

Organic Gardening
Sona E asked:


need to know how to grow and organic garden to grow vegetables and fruit.

Arianna

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