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Have Fun While You Grow Organic Vegetables

Growing organic vegetable plants is getting to be very popular as people become more and more aware of the benefits of eating organic vegetables. Even traditional farmers have taken to this practice. Let's look into the finer principles of growing organic vegetables and find out if it is a feasible method for the home grower.

Prepare Your Soil

Since you plant a crop on soil, let's begin with the soil. In order to make the soil fertile you must use only natural methods, chemical fertilizers and pellets being strictly taboo. Fortunately there are other ways to give an organic boost to the soil.

The best way to enrich your soil organically is to apply home-made compost. To be counted as organic, your compost should consist entirely of organic waste, mainly in the form of organic kitchen and garden waste. This includes fruit rinds, vegetable peelings, chemical-free grass clippings, organic egg shells, wood ash, shredded tree prunings etc. To make this process a lot easier, you can create wormeries as a part of your organic vegetable garden. You can make them yourself or buy them from stores. These worms transform your domestic waste into compost more quickly than by merely using a compost bin.

Use Natural Pest Control

Another issue that comes up when thinking of growing organic vegetables, is natural pest control. There are various methods to stop pests from invading your vegetable plot. Slugs and snails can be prevented with the use of ground coffee, copper tape, traps and by pulling them off manually from the affected parts. Pests like caterpillars and red spider mite can also be controlled biologically.

There are creatures that are beneficial to plants too. By companion planting, the right kinds of insects can be attracted to your vegetable patch. Some plants attract pollinating insects while repelling others. To prevent black and greenfly, plant marigolds near your tomatoes. Caterpillars are enticed away from your patch by planting nasturtiums near brassicas. In the same way, planting leeks near carrots will confuse the carrot fly by emitting a strong smell.

Choose Your Garden Location Well

Plan your garden in advance so that it will be not only successful, but also easier to maintain. If you can locate your garden patch by facing it south, it will receive plenty of sunshine. A garden needs a minimum of six hours of sunlight every day so make sure that there are no obstacles shading your vegetable patch. Allow for about a 1.5 percent slope for good drainage and if the location is too steep arrange them in terraces so that there is no soil erosion during rains. If the area is filled with weeds, be sure to remove them by the roots. Most important of all let your patch have easy access to your water.

Consider A Raised Bed Garden

People tend to think that a garden is made in rows. Although easily organized, a row garden produces fewer yields than bed gardens. They tend to have more weeds too. At the same time raised bed gardens stay higher than the land surrounding them. Here, there are no rows and all plants are grown together. But such beds should be kept small so that it is easy for you pull out the weeds and harvest your organic vegetable plants. Such beds also have better drainage and are not likely to undergo compaction.

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