Organic Gardening Tips That Will Help You Grow Better Food

Organic gardening can be a very enjoyable hobby. It involves particular growing techniques, along with the gardener’s choice of equipment and seeds. This vast world has so many different kinds of seeds, equipment, and techniques that it can seem a bit confusing as to where you need to begin. These tips can help you make sense of the confusion.

You can save time by using soaker hoses. Instead of standing with a hose for a long time or having to refill a container, set your water pressure on low and let your hose sit next to the plant that needs to be watered. Do not forget to turn the water off later.

If you aren’t ready to devote your time and energy to a full organic garden or just don’t have the space for one, use a container instead. Look for plants that are small and well suited for containers. Whiskey barrels are great for container gardens because they have plenty of room for roots to grow and can be used for multiple varieties of plants.

Get rid of nematodes such as roundworm or eelworm. These pests can cause malformed plants with stunted, yellowing leaves. In the worst cases, leaves will wilt in a single day and the roots will become infected. The best option is to plant resistant varieties of apple, bean, carrot, celery, cucumber or onion. Otherwise, increase the organic matter in your soil. Compost contains predacious fungi and fatty acids that are toxic to nematodes. Remember to disinfect any tools that you have used in infected soil.

When planting your organic garden, wear a carpenter’s tool belt around your waist and fill all the pockets with your gardening gloves and tools. Not only will this keep your tools organized and handy for use, it will also minimize trips back and forth to your shed to retrieve tools you have forgotten to carry with you.

If you have a problem with cutworms, instead of using harsh chemicals to get rid of them try this easy and harmless technique instead. Place ice cream sticks at the base of the plant, right up against the stem. Cutworms have to completely encircle the stems to eat at them and the sticks prevents them from doing this. Toothpicks work well too. Also, you can label the ice cream sticks with the name of the plant.

Attract positive bugs to your garden. Bugs like lady-bugs actually hunt natural predators to your plants; aphids and caterpillars are just some of the nasty critters that can go through a garden and eat the leaves of the plants. Lady bugs are the natural predators to such pests and help the growth of a good healthy garden by consuming pests.

It can help if you mulch or add composting material to your plant beds or trees with 3′ of organic material – it can help conserve water, it will discourage weeds from growing and it adds humus to your garden or plants. It also creates a nice, neat appearance to your flower beds and around trees.

Eliminate the need for excessive intervention in the health and care of your landscaping and gardening plants by choosing shrubs, grasses, and veggies that require a bare minimum maintenance. These plants are often easily identifiable by their smaller taproots and undersized, silvery colored leaves. Plants that work well with their environment require very little in the way of fertilizers and pesticides.

While organic gardening can be a personal hobby for everyone, it does share the main goal of wanting to grow healthy and happy organic plants. As you have seen in these tips, there are various approaches, but they all share the goal of being a successful organic gardener.