Organic Gardening - What’s in your garbage can?
From seed time to harvest time our gardens bring us delight. The reward of growing our own vegetables, herbs and flowers makes the effort worthwhile. It is also a healthy bonus to the dinner table. Unfortunately many well meaning gardeners use different types of chemicals in their garden in an effort to fertilize, keep the weeds at bay, and keep away pesky insects. This may not be a healthy bonus to your dinner table or to the environment. I have found some organic gardening techniques of accomplishing all three. So before making a trip to your local garden center, you might want to find out what organic gardening is all about and try the following recommendations.
Let’s start with the fertilizing. An organic gardening alternative to store bought chemicals is to compost. You can start by adding a compost pile in a hidden area by your garden. Make sure it is in a sunny location and is in a place where air will circulate through it. Gradually add grass clippings, and the following things that would normally hit the garbage can; eggshells, coffee grounds, used tea bags, banana peels and whatever vegetable or fruit scraps you would normally just throw away. Keep the pile moist and in a few months time, you will have the best fertilizer in town. Now that’s organic gardening. Don’t have a few months to wait? Add a tablespoon of ammonia to a gallon of water in your garden sprayer, spray the ground before and during the growing season and watch your plants soar.
Now we can tackle weeding, organic gardening style. Once you have dug your garden and begun to plant, you will soon find that weeds grow faster than what you planted. To eliminate this problem an organic gardening choice is to take cardboard boxes, break them down, and place them between each row. If you don’t have cardboard boxes, check the dumpsters behind your local stores. Once the cardboard is put in place I usually just throw a few rocks on top and the pile grass clippings on top and around the plants.
I think bugs get hungrier as the weather gets warmer but you can get a head start on them by raising marigolds or calendulas. I usually plant them around the whole garden. The insects hate the smell of them and most stay away. For the ones who don’t, just add 1 tablespoon of lemon dish soap to a gallon of water in your garden sprayer. This organic gardening trick works great as a pesticide but should be re-applied again after it rains.
I hope you found this organic gardening information useful!