Backyard Vegetable Garden While it may seem like a lot of work to get the beds established for planting, this can be done in stages. You can start with a small plot and enlarge the garden as time and inspiration allow. Remember, the bulk of the work, establishing the beds, only has to be done once. The best advice we can give is to put your attention to building rich, organic soil. Learning the basics of soil development is not difficult, it just requires some attention early in the season, before planting any crops, and during the season in between successive crop plantings. A well-planned and prepared garden will provide many years of productivity with relatively minimal routine maintenance.
5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work. 1. With ‘no-till’ gardening, weeding is largely eliminated. 2. Gardeners are always on the lookout for free sources of clean organic mulch to add to their garden.
Vertical Gardening Techniques for Maximum Returns - Organic Gardening Related Content 10 Tips for a Tiny Balcony Think your balcony's too tiny to provide food and fun? Check out Apartment Therapy's great tips for ... Whether your garden is large or small, you can make better use of every square inch by using vertical gardening techniques to grow upright crops. How Plants Climb Plants that benefit from garden trellises use a variety of methods to cling to support, including curling tendrils, twining stems or, in the case of tomatoes, long, ropy branches that form roots in places that touch the ground. Curling tendrils produced by peas and cucumber-family crops will twist around whatever is available, so you have plenty of versatility when supporting these crops. Twining stems have little use for horizontal lines, so they do best with trellises composed mostly of poles or an upright fence. Tomatoes like to throw themselves over their support. Temporary or Permanent? Crop-Specific Supports Cucumber varieties vary in how well they take to a trellis.
Garden Know-how: Extend Your Growing Season As late winter days lengthen, resourceful gardeners scurry to collect cloches, erect plastic-covered tunnels and put together a workable cold frame. Using season-stretching devices such as these can add four to six weeks to the front end of your growing season (and many of them will be handy again in the fall). You can make an amazing array of season-stretching garden gear from found or recycled materials, and you won’t have to rely on electric grow lights to get delectable spring greens in time for Easter or have the first ripe tomatoes on your block. Creating season-extending equipment is fun because you’re working with free solar energy. The trick is to come up with simple structures that can withstand strong winds, shed rain and snow, and absorb and store solar warmth for the plants you’re protecting. Try Creative Cloches Before cutting off the bottom of any jug, I make a vee-shaped slit in the top of the handle. Make Terrific Tunnels Make Super-easy Mini-greenhouses — Cheryl Long
Maintain a Weedless Organic Garden Weedless gardening! That’s an oxymoron, an impossibility, right? Well, my gardens may not be 100 percent weed-free, but they are 100 percent free of weed problems. I’ve achieved this happy state in four ways: 1) never tilling or otherwise disturbing the soil, so dormant weed seeds stay asleep, away from light and air; 2) designating permanent areas for walking and for planting to avoid compaction and the need for tillage; 3) maintaining a thin mulch of weed-free organic material to snuff out any weed seeds that blow in or are dropped into the garden by birds; 4) using drip irrigation whenever watering is called for to avoid promoting weed growth in paths and between widely spaced plants. Those are the basics of keeping my garden free of weed problems. A particularly nice aspect of this weedless gardening system is how much it simplifies fertilization. Because most of my gardens’ fertility comes from organic mulches, I tailor which mulch I use to the particular plant’s needs. 1. 2. 3.
Why Natural Insect Control Works Better Thirsty? The unique leaves of this cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) hold water for insects to drink. I’ve always been an organic gardener. One spring I vowed to use no rotenone at all in my potato patch, even if it meant losing the crop. That was my epiphany about the true nature of the teeming insect community around me, and my garden’s relationship to it. Using natural insect control makes perfect sense to me now. My fundamental mistake was assuming “organically approved” insecticides made more sense than using any other garden chemicals. Encourage Insects in the Garden Plants, being immobile, make a deal with their insect buddies: food and shelter in exchange for moving pollen to other plants of their species, initiating production of seeds. Many beneficial insects feed on pollen and nectar produced by flowers. Instead of planting your herbs and flowers off in their own little fiefdoms, intersperse them among crop beds. Weeds — weeds!? Local Skirmishes Accommodation. Dodgeball.
Make Your Own Pop Bottle Drip Irrigation System | You Grow Girl The last time I forgot to water my outdoor potted plants and discovered them completely wilted and hanging on the cusp of near death, I decided it was time to take action. Some of the plants on my deck receive a full, searing sun all day long during the hottest mid summer days. While these plants thrive under such conditions if properly taken care of, they will die quickly if they don’t receive enough water. One of the best ways to provide a steady water supply to your plants without your constant attention is the gradual watering system or drip irrigation. The materials you will need are as follows: 2 litre plastic soda bottle or water bottle that still has the lidDrill and small drill bitSharp knifeCutting surface Drill 4-8 small holes into the cap of the plastic bottle. Dig a hole next to a plant or in between a grouping of plants that is deep enough to bury at least one third to one half of the bottle.
Organic Gardening Tips