subject: Grow The Healthy Way: Organic Gardening Techniques [print this page] From understanding the proper mulch to use to planting your seeds at the right time of the year, the best way that you'll ever become an organic gardener is to learn some great tactics on how to grow. Hopefully, the tips you're about to read in this article will turn you on to the world of organics and help you to develop a green thumb.
You can gain time by renewing your beds with this method: slice under the turf and turn it over. Cover it with wood chips and wait a few weeks. You can then use this bed to plant your perennial plants. The ground you have turned over should be made richer by the turf that is under it.
Install a fan to blow on your seeds. Make sure your fan is turned on a very low setting. This light touch will help your plants grow stronger. You can also stroke your plants very lightly with your hand or a piece of paper for a few hours to get the same effect.
Eliminate tent caterpillars. Tent caterpillars are a major pest, infecting apple, cherry, peach and pear trees. The adult moths create a woven-like nest full of caterpillars, defoliating a tree. Destroy nests by hand. Making sure to wear gloves, pull down the nests in the early morning and kill the caterpillars by dropping them into a bucket of insecticidal soap. In the winter look for eggs masses on branches, and remove and burn them.
Keep your soil healthy, when you keep your soil healthy, you won't require chemical fertilizers. Residential users of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides apply more pounds per acre of these chemicals than farmers do. As these pollutants run off, they get into the water supply and become harmful to other plants, animals and humans.
Collecting and recycling rain water is a great way to save money and help your garden bloom. Rain water is generally cleaner and freer of pollutants and contaminants than ground water or city water. Collect the rain in rain barrels or cisterns so that you can use it whenever it is needed.
By adding a nice layer of bio-degradable material (mulch) around your plants, you can utilize the natural pest-fighting ability within the mulch to stop predators to your plants. By putting a one to two inch layer around your plants, you are also adding a source of nutrients and a source of water.
When planting your tomato seedlings in your organic garden, you should plant them up to the first true leaves, which will bury the stem. The reason is because new roots will sprout on these buried stems. The more roots there are in a seedling, the more fruit it will produce.
Use plants that work together. Some plants take nutrients away from the soil while others fixate those same-lost nutrients. Traditionally, vegetables are planted with a crop rotation because of the ability of certain crops to replenish the natural nitrogen in the ground. However, you may be able to take advantage of this knowledge by pairing up "companion plants".
Use compost to improve the quality of your soil. Compost comes from the breakdown of natural vegetation, and it is organic. It improves the structure of your soil by making it less dense, thus allowing better water permeability. Compost can also be used to balance the pH level of your soil.
Although there are many organic weed killers available on the market, it is often best and a real money saver to pull weeds by hand. If you keep up with it regularly, you can easily pull weeds before their roots are established. Wear gloves and be sure to pull out both the foliage and roots.
Mulch is quite a welcome addition to any organic garden, but there there can be too much of a good thing. A tree with too much mulch on its trunk can easily become diseased or infested. To prevent that, do not pile it against their trunks and instead spread it as far as to the drip line.
Organic gardening has numerous benefits, but there is simply not enough space to list them all in this article. When you need a reminder on things you can do to make your garden great, look back to this advice.
