Six Ingenius Ways To Have An Organic Vegetable Garden Without Giving Up Your Life

Six Ingenius Ways To Have An Organic Vegetable Garden Without Giving Up Your Life

Tomatoes taken by fusarium wilt. Sugar snap peas eaten up by aphids. An army of slugs in the lettuce patch. Broccoli that never heads.

Sound familiar? If you’ve experienced any of the above, then you know how difficult gardening—especially organic gardening—can be to integrate into an already full schedule. Plants need care and careful monitoring when you’re avoiding chemical pesticides like the plague.

But there is a way to successfully plant and grow organic vegetables. Over the past couple of years I’ve learned some valuable lessons about how to manage an organic vegetable garden without having to devote all your free time to it. Allow me to share them with you…

1. Start small. I decided to plant a garden the year my son turned one. That would’ve been okay, if I’d stuck to a small lettuce patch and a couple of tomato plants. But, not knowing how much time and attention my son would require in the coming months, I bit off way more than I could chew. I ended up having an aphid infestation, diseased tomatoes, and generally an unfruitful harvest.

Another option for keeping it small is container gardening. Anybody can find time to tend to five potted plants per day, especially since container gardens tend to be close to the house, so you are more likely to remember to check them. Which leads me to the next point…

2. Make time to check on your plants at least every other day. Carefully checking each plant for disease and pests on alternate days won’t take very much time, especially if you kept your garden down to a manageable size. But the time you invest doing it will pay off big-time. You’ll be able to find pests and recognize the beginning stages of disease before they have a chance to completely obliterate your crops.

3. Set up an easy watering system. Underground irrigation systems, once installed, require the least amount of time and effort. However, the cost might be more than you’re willing to cover. If that’s the case, lay soaker hoses an inch or so under the soil where you’re going to plant. Being able to turn on a spigot and leave it for twenty minutes is much easier than lugging a hose around the yard.

4. Write down the fertilizing schedule in a calendar or daytimer you look at often. If you overfertilize, you end up with a lot of foliage and not much harvest. Underfertilizing will lead to pathetic looking plants and small fruits. Different crops have different feeding requirements, so getting yourself organized in this area of gardening will really pay off.

5. Spray with chemical-free pesticides and repellents every week or two as soon as the shoots sprout up from the ground. Bugs hate neem oil, which is extracted from a native Indian tree. It can also prevent or fend off certain fungi, like powdery mildew. Spinosad is odorless and safe for the beneficial insects, while it kills the plant-eaters. Orange oil kills any insect that it hits.

Be sure to rotate the use of organic pesticides. Too much neem oil can harm bees, and Spinosad is supposed to be used no more than once a month for most crops.

6. Consider raised bed gardening. Or, at the very least, mulch your garden heavily. Either way will save you a lot of weeding (I have practically no weeds in my raised beds). Raised beds are also much easier to dig into because of the loose soil.

Growing your very own organic vegetable garden, even if your days are full, is possible. Follow these tips, and you will soon find yourself surrounded by delicious food from a garden you have spent only a few minutes a day on.

How much nitrogen is in Fox Farm Organic Soil?

Question by Mike: How much nitrogen is in Fox Farm Organic Soil?
Can you please tell me how much percent of nitrogen is in it. It has a picture of fish on the bag

Best answer:

Answer by Renatar
I think it’s FarmFox, but anyway soil in general does not have nitrogen in it, unless there is added fertilizer. If it did, it would say so on the bag. Nitrogen is usually added via fertilizer/plant food, along with Phosphorus and Potassium (NPK listed as something like 10-10-10 or other ratios).

What do you think? Answer below!

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Do Organic Food Nazis realise the purpose of preservatives and pesticides?

Question by Whishkey Bottom.: Do Organic Food Nazis realise the purpose of preservatives and pesticides?
Preservatives preserve food by slowing or totally preventing spoilage.

Pesticides keep off…. take a guess…. pests!!!! I decided to try some corn on the cob from Whole Foods Market this summer and in 5 out of 10 of the cobs there were LIVE maggots.
To the organic food nazis: What should I have done with the maggots? Hugged them? Set them free? Allowed them to eat with me?
It seems that the function of preservatives and pesticides is totally lost on these people. They have no clue what they are for.
To those who say that preservatives and pesticides definitively cause diseases at the rate normal human beings consume them then please post references.

Best answer:

Answer by ibbibud
Sure they do. It makes for nice looking food that lasts longer. However some of us can’t tolerate preservatives and pesticides and get very, very ill, so we have to pick out maggots and cut off bad portions. The maggots go in the garbage or I feed them to the fish, who love them. It’s not about bug loving or hugging, it’s about acute toxic hepatitis for me…..

What do you think? Answer below!

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Organic Home Garden Success

Organic Home Garden Success

An organic garden can provide a lot of benefits. If you are interested in this kind of gardening then you must always make sure that you learn the right tips to maintain the plants. You can either grow fruits, vegetables or even flowers in your organic home garden.

Lots of people these days are taking up this type of gardening because they have understood that it is not only economical but it is even good for health. The foods are much healthier than what you get in the market.

The best thing about this kind of gardening is that it does not use any kind of artificial elements or fertilizers. Now you might want to know how to grow an organic garden. There are certain tips which can help you make a perfect garden in your house.

There are certain things that you need to check before you start planting the tress. The first thing that you need to check is the soil. The soil is one of the most essential things that are required by the plants.

The soil not only provides proper support to the plant but also provides certain other nutrients which are very much essential for the plants. You must always make sure that you use organic fertilizer or compost which will help the soil get back the nutrients if it has lost it due to some reason.

So you must always pay proper attention to the soil of the garden. The next step which you need to take is to think about proper protection of the plants. There are certain things which can cause harm to the plants.

This is the reason why you need to arrange for protection. You need to protect the plant from the weeds. Other than this, you must also be careful about certain kinds of diseases as well as pests.

When you use the pesticide you must always use the organic pesticides. They work just like the chemical pesticides but they just do not have the bad effects like the chemical ones. The other important task that you need to do is select the right kind of plants.

You must also be careful about the organic gardening tools that you will require during gardening. You can choose any plant for your organic home garden. But you need to make sure that you plan it nicely.

If you read a guide of organic home gardening you will find a list of the seeds that are available for planting. You just need to make sure that your plants get proper sunlight and enough water so that they can grow. Other than this, space management is also very much necessary in the garden.

Organic Sprouts Growing Kit Refill

Organic Sprouts Growing Kit Refill

• organic & eco-friendly
• includes sprouts and growing medium
• can be used on it’s own or with the terracotta growing kits

Enjoy fresh organic sprouts at home in just 5 days! The sprout refill kit can be used with your own container or the Eco-Culture window sill herb garden kit.

Price: $ 8.95

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