Category Archives: Gardening

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Organic Fertilizers (Grow Organic)

It is better to use organic fertilizers for a number of reasons, not the least of which is what you are leaving behind in your environment as you garden.  However, chemical fertilizers can actually damage plants, causing a speed of growth that weakens the plants to disease and damage in the long-term.

Bonemeal:  Promotes strong root growth, use as a base dressing before planting shrubs, fruit, and other perennials.

Plant-based Fertilizers:  Such as comfrey, alfalfa, and soy.  Use to feed vegetables.

Soybean meal:  High-nitrogen source.  Use on annual vegetable beds or as a base dressing in poor soil.

Seaweed meal:  Helps build up humus levels.  Use for annual beds, fruit trees, bushes, lawns.

Rock Phosphate:  Use to correct a phosphate deficiency, good non-animal alternative to bonemeal.

Organic garden potash:  Use to feed fruit and vegetables.

Gypsum:  Supplies calcium without altering PH

If you do need to alter the PH of soil, use ground limestone or dolomitic limestone to make it more alkaline.

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Compost (stuff to use)

Greens (quick to rot):

Grass mowings

Poultry manure (without bedding)

Young weeds and plants, nettles of any age

Intermediate:

Fruit and vegetable scraps

Rhubarb leaves

Tea bags, tea leaves, coffee grounds

Vegetable plants

strawy animal manures

cut flowers

soft hedge clippings

Bedding from herbivorous pets

perennial weeds

Browns (slow to rot):

Old straw

Tough plant and vegetable stems

old bedding plants

fall leaves

woody prunings, evergreen hedge trimmings

cardboard tubes, egg cartons

crumpled paper and newspaper

DO NOT USE:

Meat and fish scraps

dog and cat offal

disposable diapers

coal ashes

plastic, polystyrene, glass, metal

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Organic Soil Improvers

Garden Compost:  MEdium fertility.  Dig in or mulch.

Green waste compost:  Low fertility.  Dig in or mulch.  Available from large-scale municipal recycling centers, likely low in nitrogen but high in potassium.

Commercial bagged compost:  Variable fertility.  Dig in or mulch.

Worm compost:  High fertility.

Strawy animal manures:  Medium to high fertility.  Must be well rotted before being dug into the soil.  Unfortunately, getting organic animal manure is difficult.

Spent mushroom compost:  Medium fertility.  Tends to be alkaline, so choose which plants to use it on with care.  Can be sourced from organic mushroom growers.

Leaf mold:  Low fertility.  Mulch or dig in, depending on age.

Straw:  Low fertility.  Source from an organic farm if possible.  Best as a mulch.

Bark chips and shredded prunings:  Lower fertility.  Best used as a mulch only, and on ornamentals, rather than food plants.  If dug in, they can rob nitrogen from the soil.  This caution also applies to horse manure with wood chips.

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Things to do about weeds

The best plan is still and sadly pulling them before they seed.  Especially if you want to garden organically.

Another less toxic option that works is using vinegar as an herbicide.  However, vinegar will still seep into the ground and expand its area of effect well beyond where you want.  For driveways, sidewalks, and street weeds, this shouldn’t be an issue.  But use caution when using it anywhere near where you have planted or want to plant.

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Succession Garden 1 (The Bountiful Container)

Use a pot 2 feet wide, and 3 feet deep

Spring

As early as you can planet – mustard or other Asian Green of your choice in the center.  Bush snap peas inset a little from the rim of the pot.  Plant pansies in between.

Summer

Cut off peas at ground level.  Remove remnants.  In late May, transplant a tomato plant into the center and stake it.  Around August, direct sow kale under the tomato, removing lower leaves as needed.  Thin to six inches apart.

Fall

Cut tomato off at ground level when it fades, so as not to dislodge the kale.  Clean up as needed, and plant (yellow) tulips where there is available space.

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Organic Gardening “Do’s”

Manage everything you plant organically.

Grow your garden for wildlife, as well as people.  This will encourage beneficial insects and predators.

Learn your bugs.  Some are good, some are bad.  Once you start to know the difference, knowing which ones to squish or remove becomes far easier.

Play to your garden’s strengths, by figuring out and utilizing its characteristics.

Make soil care a priority.

Make your own compost and leaf mold.  Cuts back on the amount of stuff you are sending to the dump, and helps the garden at the same time.

Reuse and recycle what you can, where you can.  The less we stick in landfills, the better.

Whenever you can, use organic seeds.

Take environmental impact into account when choosing materials for your landscaping.  Where it comes from and how it is collected is as important as what it is made of, in the grand scheme of things.

Collect rainwater, and reduce the need for watering by improving soil and choosing appropos plants.

Make local sourcing your first choice.

Use traditional methods where it makes sense to.

Science is your friend to.  Not all of what comes out of research is chemically based or inappropriate for organic gardening.

Stop using artificial fertilizers.

Give up bonfires.

Control weeds without using herbicides.

Avoid the use of pesticides and treated wood.

Say not to GMO.

Choose weird heirloom varieties to grow from time to time.  Diversity is good, and growing something threatened here and there is a way to assist with that.

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