A New Visitor’s Guide – Start Here!
It’s Time For Organic Gardening
Anyone Can Do It!
Have you ever tasted homegrown tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce? There’s nothing better than the taste of food that came from the garden straight to your table.
All those terrific tomatoes, sensational spuds, and mouth-watering melons are easy to grow. And won’t take up much of your time or garden space.
This is not as complicated as you might think.
If you have access to a deck, a roof, or a patch of ground no larger than a flower bed, you can learn how to feed yourself and others. You can learn as much about soil and gardening as the most experienced farmer knew a hundred years ago. Or be up on what’s working good today. Stay tuned. Follow the tips & suggestions. And please, add your wishes and thoughts to the comment sections.
Putting it into practice takes time. Today is the day to begin your garden.
Visualize yourself going out and picking dozens of different kinds of fresh and crispy vegetables that grow with little maintenance.
Think of a small plot of very rich soil that feeds your family with less than an hour of labor per day. Imagine hundreds of pounds of different fruits coming from trees in your backyard.
This can be done if you learn …the basics.
The key elements to start your organic garden are sun, soil and water.
Minimum tools needed? Gloves and a shovel.
And, here’s a few do’s and don’ts:
- Stop applying pesticides and weed killers to the soil in your garden. No exceptions.
- Start small. Fifty square feet for example. Think of your area as sunny spots and shaded areas. Avoid the area next to buildings or fences because of possible contamination of the soil by paint, heavy metals or chemicals.
- Remove whatever debris is covering the dirt including rocks larger than a fingernail. If plants already grow there, dig them out with a shovel and save them off to the side.
- Cover your gardening area with organic material such as leaves, dried grass and fine plant material from your own garden.
- Get a bucketful of good compost from someone else’s garden or crumbly black sweet-smelling soil from under forest trees. Spread thinly and evenly over your garden. This will enrich your soil with all manner of soil organisms, little bugs, worms and other beneficial life forms. These buggers are going to do most of the work for you. Just give them the chance.
- Use a pick or shovel to mix the organic material into the top 3 inches of soil. Burying the organic material any deeper kills the critters and wastes your effort.
- Keep the soil damp like a wrung out sponge. Not soggy.
- Never walk on your soil. Why? Walking compacts the soil. I’ll explain how to get around in your garden in latter posts
- Obtain vegetables in 4” pots. Dig a hole slightly larger than the 4” pot. Then, squeeze the sides to unstick the plant, fluff it’s roots sideways, and plant it. Mulch around it with organic material. This will keep the soil moist underneath.
- Start your own compost heap in a corner of the garden. Just heap up all the clean organic material that you can get and mix it up occasionally. Apply the compost periodically to the soil around your plants. We will discuss this in latter posts.
What does all this have to do with this blog?
Simple. I have something unique to say. Unique enough to grow a worldwide, inspired, and “awakened” community who want outstanding taste and better health.
Within these pages, I offer not only my own experiences, but those of others I’ve had the opportunity to meet, garden with and learn from. And, to these experiences, I add my own voice.
This blog, and the community it serves, is about giving real, practical, personal and valuable advice for growing the best “dam tasting” veggies you ever had. Sometimes the posts will mumble, stumble, and default to better info in this endeavor.
It is, in a large-part, experience-driven, because nobody likes being preached to. And, we all love discovering the life-changing morsels in another’s trials.
Through it, I hope to inspire you to explore organic gardening from different points of view.
This blog revolves around…
- Need To Garden Organically – Convincing us readers that we need to protect ourselves, our nation and the environment by growing and eating organic food. John Hopkins University revealed that home gardeners unnecessarily use almost 10 times more pesticides per acre than the average farmer; and, that disease caused by environmental illness (exposure to chemicals) is now the number one cause of death in the U.S.
- Creating A Healthy, Balanced Soil – Exploring the main ingredient of organic gardening-healthy soil. The healthy soil together with the healthy habitat should lead to healthy and productive plants. Plants get water, air and nutrients from the soil. This is where organic matter comes into play. Adding organic matter improves any soil’s texture as well as attracting soil organisms that create nutrients in the soil.
- Composting: As an avid gardener, I would want to speed up the composting process and avoid the pitfalls of bad odor and attracting unwanted pests. My well-maintained and active compost pile will convert organic material to compost in as little as thirty days. I will also share with you the recipe for the compost tea.
- Pests and Disease Control Without Chemicals: Exploring the impact of beneficial insects in your garden. Keep in mind that not every insect is a foe and that action doesn’t necessarily mean pesticide. Use of organic spray are more friendly to the environment.
- Organic Plant Nutrients: The best results I have ever had was when I used shredded fall leaves as a mulch. I do not use any nutrients other than compost and organic mulches.
How can you get the most out of this blog?
- First – Start with the articles in the “Must Read” section toward the top right of this page. This opening page is the first of more to come. Read and gain knowledge. And, you’re well on your way to great taste and better heath.
- Second – Check out the “Topic” section. Here you’ll find information arranged in groups so you can find the topics of interest.
- Finally, and Most importantly, share your voice and become an active member in the Comments areas below each article. Most people ease their way into blogs, becoming readers and, eventually commenting. So, take your time, get comfortable. And when ever you’re ready, share your thoughts, ask questions and join in the conversation by adding your comments in the form following the Comment section that ends every article.
My greatest hope in sharing this blog, its resources, and stories is that they’ll leave you inspired and enriched on a level that will have you go beyond just telling everyone about what you’ve learned, but actually doing something to wake up your gardening skills and, eventually your life.
With wishes of warm sunny days, gentle showers and abundant crops..
Polly
