Enjoying The Harvest
Your very basic garden tools will consist of: shovel, hoe, rake, trowel, pitchfork and hand fork.
Your garden will do best if worked up before planting, and using a mulch after everything gets growing. Your mulch can be grass clippings from the lawn, provided you haven’t used any chemicals or sprays on the lawn. If you have a pile of leaves left over from raking the lawn in the fall, those leaves will provide an excellent mulch for your vegetable garden. The leaves can be used as-is, or better yet, chopped with a mulcher or shredder. The shredded leaves will stay in place much better than the unshredded ones.
To keep the weeds under control, your mulch should be spread between the rows 1-3 inches deep. Some gardeners have good luck spreading newspapers or black plastic sheets between the rows, if organic mulch material is not available.
Choosing the proper seeds for your planting zone is critical if you want a healthy garden. If you have a source for Organic Seeds, that’s even better yet. Remember, your vines will need plenty of room between plants and rows, as well. These include the melons, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins. Peas and carrots like to be planted early while the ground is still cold. Using an Almanac to determine your planting dates and zones can make all the difference between a successful garden and a lot of work for nothing.
Your organic garden loves compost. You can provide plenty of compost from your kitchen scraps. The best way to prepare the compost is to purchase a composter. There are several different models available. Choose the one that best suits your needs. For instance, if you have a small family, and not much kitchen waste, a small counter top composter would work just fine. If you have been blessed with plenty of compost materials, you may wish to purchase a compost tumbler. This is a barrel that can be turned very easily to keep the compost mixed. Your garden loves the coffee grounds and vegetable trimmings. If you are fortunate enough to have earthworms, you may not need a composter, as worms are very good composters.
The best ingredients for good compost consist of: leaves, tea bags, coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable peelings and trimmings, lawn clippings. If your compost pile is outdoors, it should be turned and mixed at least once a week to control the odor and keep the temperature high enough to decompose, but also to add air to the microorganisms.
If your plants suffer from insect invasion, be sure to use a good organic spray or dust. BT (bacillus thuringiensis) is a very good product for insect control. It is one of the environmentally safe products you can find under several different brand names.
Be good to your toads and worms. Of course, your toads will love your worms, but they will also keep some of your unwanted pests under control. You can provide a small saucer of water for your toads, or maybe even purchase a “toad house” for them to seek shelter from predators and weather.
If you would like to learn more about gardening, check out this free video site that has dozens of videos on many different gardening subjects that you can watch anytime. GARDENING
