Growing An Organic Garden: Tips And Tricks

Growing An Organic Garden: Tips And Tricks

Application of correct organic gardening tips and products will shine through in the quality of your garden. Being motivated to take care of your garden and wanting to put some time and efforts in it is a great thing. This is extremely laudable. Like other skills, there is always room for improvement. Read on for some insights that can prove to be invaluable. Keep the temperature in your home between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, if you are keeping or growing any kind of plant in your house. This level of heat is required in order for plants to grow. If you don't like keeping your home that temperature in the winter, you may wish to consider getting a heat lamp, instead, to keep your organic plants the correct temperature. If you have an organic garden and children, plant some everbearing strawberries for them. Strawberries are a favorite of children due to their sweetness. And since they're so easy and fun to pick, it's also a healthy, productive, safe activity that children can assist adults with. It's simple to lay a new perennial bed. Turn over the soil in your garden so it will be soft and easy to plant before spreading wood chips around your garden. Allow for at least 10 days to pass, then plant the perennials that you just purchased. One way to create a great organic garden is to allow for a portion of your yard to be undeveloped for wildlife. The presence of native flowers, trees and grasses will attract birds and insects. You will be rewarded by an appealing and flourishing landscape. Make sure you work in your garden every day. Don't waste your time looking for missing tools. Before you start work in the garden, make sure you have the necessary tools, and always remember to put them away when you are finished. If needed, purchase a tool belt or heavy duty pants with plenty of pockets. Plants growing in your home need a constant temperature of no less than 65 degrees. They need the temperature to be that warm so that they can grow. Another option is the use heat lamps that will protect your organic plants. Use an aged laundry basket when you want to collect your produce. The basket will make a great strainer when you wash your vegetables. The produce can be rinsed off as it sits in the laundry basket, and extra water will drain out through the sides. Perennial gardens should be prepared easily and quickly in the ground. All you need to do is use a garden spade to slice under the turf, flip it over, then spread wood chips over the area about three to four inches deep. Allow for at least 10 days to pass, then plant the perennials that you just purchased. To get the most from your composting efforts, aim for a 1:1 ratio of dried materials and green plant products. Examples of good green material to use for compost include grass clippings, flowers, leaves, and weeds. Paper and straw are dry plant materials. Materials to avoid during composting include diseased plants, meat, ashes and charcoal. To be most efficient in your gardening, always keep your tools close at hand. You should use a large pail and wear sturdy pants that have several pockets. Keep your gloves, pruning shears, a hand spade and your other tools handy to quickly and easily do your garden maintenance. Do you want to get rid of weeds in a natural way? Try using several newspaper layers to control weeds. Weeds need sunlight to grow. By covering them with a layer of newspaper, you are essentially suffocating the weeds due to a lack of light. As an added benefit, the newspapers will decompose over time, becoming organic compost. Put mulch over top to increase the attractiveness of the pile. Planted flowers will benefit from organic materials that are built up to as much as three inches. This fights weeds, retains moisture, and gives your garden valuable nutrients. Mulch will also improve the general appearance of your flower beds. When planting seeds in containers, remember that the planting depth should be around three times bigger than the seed size. Some seeds need sunlight and should not be buried. This is true of popular flowers like petunias and zinnias. If you don't know whether your seeds require sun exposure, check the seed package or search online for the information. Be efficient when working in your garden. Do not spend half an hour looking everywhere for a tool. By keeping your tools in a certain area, they will always be ready whenever you are. One way to keep your tools handy is to use a belt especially designed to hold them. An alternative is to wear a garment with multiple pockets that are big enough to hold your more commonly used tools. If slugs are disrupting the balance of your garden, you can diminish their population by using a beer trap. Bury a glass jar in your garden so that its open mouth is level with the top of the soil. Fill the jar with beer within one inch of the top. Slugs will be attracted by the beer and fall into the jar. Store a few plastic bags near your garden to slip on over your dirty gardening shoes. This helps the flow keep going so that you can get into the garden quickly to finish what you're doing. If you are building a raised bed utilize stone, brick or wood that is untreated. Any wood you use needs to be untreated and resistant to rot. Good choices are cypress, cedar and locust. Using untreated wood is especially important for veggie gardens, because chemicals from treated wood could leach into the soil, affecting your food. If you have built a bed with treated lumber already, use a barrier such as plastic to line the bed.

Dry Plant Materials

To be able to say you have legitimate organic and credible crops, you will need to be certified as having an organic garden. This will improve your sales and show your faithful customers that they are getting the best possible food that is grown. Your compost pile should contain green plant materials and dry plant materials. When you pull weeds from your garden, throw them in the compost. The same goes for vegetable trimmings and grass clippings. These are considered green materials. Paper and straw are dry plant materials. Avoid ashes, meat, charcoal and diseased plants in your compost. If plants are inundated with too much water, it becomes more difficult for roots to pull nutrients out of the soil. Prior to watering your outdoor plants, you should check with weather stations to see if it will be raining later in the day. If the weather forecast calls for rain, it's probably wise to not water your plants that day. Ruffle the seedlings carefully with a piece of soft cardboard or your hands twice a day. That may sound like a silly thing to do, but it's been proven to help plants grow larger than they would otherwise. Any type of gardening can be a fun hobby because it brings you closer to the earth, but creating an organic garden is really good at this. Organic gardening is an excellent lesson in the plant life cycle and how to get the most from the planting process. Use alcohol to help control the slugs in your garden by fashioning a beer trap. Dig a hole the size of a glass jar, and bury the jar with the top at ground level. Fill that with beer just under an inch from the top of your jar. Slugs will be attracted to the beer and find themselves trapped. Annually rotate your garden. If the types of plants that you grow are consistent from one year to the next, they may be more prone to diseases and plant fungus. The fungus and bacteria will stay in the ground a whole year and attack your plants when the time is right. Moving the plants to different areas will prevent these invaders from growing on your plants.

Treated Wood

When working in the garden, know exactly what you are using. There are many organic fertilizers and pesticides available which are much better options than chemicals. For example, consider creating your own compost heap. By using organic substances as fertilizers, you avoid contributing to the toxic levels of contamination in soil and water that inorganic fertilizers have been blamed for causing. Use untreated stone, brick or wood to build raised beds. Make sure the wood you use is untreated and rot resistant. Several species of trees yield suitable wood. Locust, cypress, and cedar are among the more commonly used rot resitent woods. Avoid using treated wood since they contain chemicals that could disperse into the soil or the crops. If you have some space treated wood, you can still use it, however, be sure to line it with some type of barrier like plastic sheeting. Try to make your organic garden a beautiful shade garden. Shade gardens are designed to be hardy and low maintenance. Your plants will need less watering, saving you time and money. While the plants in shade gardens grow slower, so do the weeds. You now possess the information, the equipment, and the required skills to use what you've just read to grow a fantastic organic garden. You are ready to start your own garden. These tips should provide you with a good basis for your gardening. You might even have learned something you hadn't known before to use in your organic garden. Use at least three inches of organic materials to mulch trees and flowers. This is a technique that provides benefits to the land itself, but that also minimizes water usage, allowing you to save money and the environment simultaneously. It is likely that you will also find it visually appealing.