Organic Gardening...The Better Way to Grow

Organic vegetable gardening, the benefits to you and your family are huge.
Would you rather eat fresh lush vegetables without the fear of insecticides and chemicals? Would you like to feed your family a natural food, full of antioxidants and vitamins? Organic vegetable gardening is your one and only answer.

Have you ever seen soil after years of applications of chemical fertilizers? Icky. The color is just like the soil, bleached, colorless, lifeless. Have you seen organic soil? Organically managed soil is rich in beneficial organisms, richly composted to a rich dark color. Which soil would you rather grow vegetables, any of your plants in?

Are you becoming aware or very aware of the need to preserve, to protect our environment? Organic vegetable gardening, organic gardening in any form is the better way to grow. You can grow lush delicious fruit and vegetables, wonderfully strong flowers, trees, and shrubs without the harmful effects of chemicals.

There are so many sources on the net, in magazines (we highly recommend “Organic Gardening”), in books to research all the benefits of Organic Vegetable Gardening. Whether you have a small patio space for containers only, or a huge garden space, you can successfully grow the ‘Organic’ way.

Healthy soil is full of beneficial organisms called nematodes. Growing beans, peas, and nasturtiums encourage and multiply these beneficial organisms. In naturally organic soil, worms are your friends, multiplying quickly to organize a huge troop of soldiers to munch and digest the soil. They naturally compost the soil through the digestive process to give you a rich beneficial medium to grow your plants in. Chemicals kill the beneficial organisms and discourage the worms. Who wants to eat plastic?

With a little research, you can find out that you rotate your crops so that the peas, beans, and pretty nasturtiums reinvigorate the soil depleted by other crops. You can plant marigolds to repel the natural enemies of your vegetables. They don’t like the color or the smell. Marigolds are priceless to a natural organic vegetable garden, pretty and workhorses for you.

Encourage natural predators in your organic vegetable gardening plans. These natural allies will assist you in keeping your vegetables pest free. They include ladybugs that voraciously eat aphids and wasps who love to sting and eat worms, anything that moves into their territory.

Other natural organic vegetable gardening friends are the friendly preying mantis which has an enormous appetite for bad bugs and the delicate lovely green lacewing. Welcome these friends, encourage their presence in your organic vegetable garden.

Gurneys’ Seed and Nursery is a long time favorite for strong vegetables for your organic vegetable garden. Their fruits are wonderful too. You can’t miss with this aged company who also offers natural sprays, traps, and pest solutions. Their constant research and development programs guarantee you the finest quality.

Strong plants naturally discourage pests and disease, cuts your work and preservation needs down considerably. You can order from Gurneys’ online or through their catalog. We at LandscapeCentral.net highly recommend this tried and true organic vegetable gardening source.

The benefits of feeding your family food you have homegrown are enormous. You know what conditions they are grown under and what they have been exposed to. You know you are getting the best of the best, naturally grown organic vegetable gardening at it’s best, all in your control and supervision.

Lastly, you not only benefit your family, you benefit your immediate neighborhood, your local natural ecosystem. A pebble dropped in a pool has radiating patterns of effect. You can be that pebble that starts a no chemical, all natural organic vegetable gardening project in your own backyard.

Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com

About Randeen Cummings Nelson:
My vocation is as a certified appraiser of personal property. My vocation and my avocation all are centered on value. Family, the outdoors, gardening, and creating our own backyard sanctuary provides me with the most value in my life. A value I am most happy to share with you. Visit us at www.LandscapingCentral.net/ for a total landscaping and gardening experience.

What is Organic Composting?

Making compost will help you reduce pollution and cut down that landfill! Your plants will grow healthier and look happier for it and it will save you money on fertilisers too. Our local council in Manchester has now given us brown bins for us to add leaves, grass and other compost matter into, which is then emptied every two weeks once it has reduced to less than half its size.
What is compost?

Garden guides often describe composting as natures way of recycling.

Composting is indeed a natural way of recycling, harnessing natural processes rather than machinery and man-made chemicals, but it takes people to do it.

Soil maintenance is at the heart of organic growing: dont feed the plants, feed the soil -- the plants will look after themselves. The extremely complex subject of soil maintenance can happily be summed up in one word: composting.

A smelly hole at the far end of the garden filled with putrefying kitchen wastes and flies buzzing round. Thats what compost isnt. No stinks, no flies, though kitchen waste is welcome.

Compost is not just decayed organic matter. Composting is applied microbiology at its most complex, involving the interactions of thousands upon thousands of different species of micro organisms in a highly complex ecosystem.

What can I compost?

If it can rot it will compost, but some items are best avoided. Some things, like grass mowings and soft young weeds, rot quickly. They work as activators or hotter rotters, getting the composting started, but on their own will decay to a smelly mess. Recycle your plant-based, kitchen and garden waste by making it into compost

Older and tougher plant material is slower to rot but gives body to the finished compost - and usually makes up the bulk of a compost heap. Woody items decay very slowly; they are best chopped or shredded first, where appropriate.

A container or brown bin is not an absolute necessity as you can make perfectly good compost in a free standing heap as long as it is large enough. You will see later why this may be a drawback. Assuming then that we need to make a container we are faced with many choices.

Why not make or buy a compost bin? Theyre usually cheap to buy, and are available in wood or recycled plastic (that might otherwise be in your local landfill site). If youre keen you could combine it with a wormery or use a shredder which increases the amount of compostable waste. Do not compost foods such as dairy produce, meat, bread etc as these attract flies and vermin.

How do I know when its done?

That depends. What was a pile of plant material will gradually, from the bottom up, turn into a pile of dark stuff that looks like brown dirt. Eventually, none of the items you put in there will be recognizable. If youre using it out in the garden, a few small recognizable bits wont hurt - theyll finish composting in the garden. If youre using it for houseplants or to start seeds, its better to wait until its well finished so you dont have microbes attacking the fine rootlets of new plants.

Dig it in to have a healthy, fertile garden and your fruit and vegetables can be organic. Dont assume the waste is harmless and bin it. Putting it in landfill costs money and it will produce methane (a global warming gas); also it may pollute the groundwater.

Compost waste often comprises about 20-30% of your total household waste and the impact on recycling is significant.

Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com

About Davinos Greeno:
Davinos Greeno works for the organic and ethical directory that lists 100s of Organic and Ethical Companies and we also have Organic Articles for you to read or publish.