Organic fruits and vegetables are both delicious and healthy, far surpassing normal supermarket produce. Don’t buy from the stores, grown your own. Keep reading to learn how you can grow an organic garden, right in your home.
If you are a fan of organic, sustainable gardening methods, consider leaving part of your backyard untouched so that natural plants and wildlife can flourish in the area. The presence of native flowers, trees and grasses will attract birds and insects. You will be rewarded by an appealing and flourishing landscape.
To be as efficient as possible in the garden, always have your tools handy. Large pockets or a sturdy bucket can be used to store tools. You will be much more productive if you can quickly get to your spade, pruning shears, trowel and watering can.
Coat your flower beds with a few inches of an organic mulch. Mulch will minimize weed growth and maximize nutrients and moisture. As an added bonus, a nice mulch can help make your garden look more finished.
Coffee Grounds
Coffee grounds are a good addition to your soil. Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plant growth. Generally, nitrogen is the limiting nutrient with any plant and having a good nitrogen source either by coffee grounds, compost, or even diluted urea, will make your plants bloom faster and grow taller.
Spacing is an important factor to consider when planting your garden. You can easily underestimate how much space the plants need until they begin to grow. Failure to provide adequate room will restrict growth because it forces plants to compete for valuable nutrients and oxygen. Plot out all of these considerations before putting that first seed in the ground.
Want to kill weeds naturally? You can place newspaper in several layers, and it will help control your weeds. Weeds can only grow in sunlight. When you put newspaper over them, they suffocate from lack of sunlight. As an added benefit, the newspapers will decompose over time, becoming organic compost. Put mulch over top to increase the attractiveness of the pile.
If you have recently planted seeds in your organic garden, you should regularly aerate the soil by using your hands to gently sift it. It may sound a little odd to do this, but there is actually proven research that shows this helps the plants grow.
If slugs are a problem in your garden, use a beer trap to kill them naturally. Bury a glass jar in your garden so that its open mouth is level with the top of the soil. Next, fill up the jar with beer until there is around one inch between the liquid level and the jar top. The slugs will be attracted to the beer, and will then become trapped within the jar.
Change how much you water your plants with the changing of the seasons. You should also adjust your watering habits if the temperature or amount of rainfall changes dramatically. When watering your plants, consider the time you are watering them, the kind of soil you are using and how good the water is. For instance, if you live in a humid climate where it never goes below 30 degrees Celsius, refrain from watering the leaves, as this will inevitably invite leaf fungus. Instead, keep the root system well-watered.
Over-watering your plants can be harmful, because roots that are drowning in water cannot effectively pull nutrients out of the soil. Before watering plants outdoors, check with some weather stations to find out if it will rain anytime during the day. Depending on the weather, you might want to skip watering for the day.
When choosing plants, dig a little deeper. If you’re buying some tomato seedlings to use in your garden, keep a look out for starts that are lush and green, but have poor root systems. As time goes by, the starts will begin to fall off, but you shouldn’t transplant your seedlings until this happens.
It is easy to set up a perennial garden by following these simple instructions. Use a spade to cut the turf and flip it over. Cover the prepared area with a layer of wood chips. Wait a few weeks and then plant your perennials into the brand new bed.
Know what you can and cannot use in your organic garden. Experiment with organic and natural fertilizers instead of the usual chemical, commercial ones. Compost is a popular type of fertilizer. Benefits of using organic methods, as opposed to inorganic methods include, less use of toxic chemical buildups in drinking water and in the soil as well.
There is no need to buy produce of lesser quality. Utilize the advice you’ve read in this article and start growing fruits and vegetables of your own.
