Organic Gardening 101: Master the Basics of Growing a Chemical Free Garden

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The Basic “Why’s” and “How’s” of Growing Organic

Organic gardening was for a while seen as something only the super health-nuts or hippies did. But, not so anymore, we are all becoming aware that the methods of gardening with chemicals that have become popular in recent generations are no healthier than the awful stuff called margarine.

The more research that has come out showing the terrible side effects of synthetic fertilizers and the chemicals in commercial pesticides and herbicides, the more we realize, the hippies had something there! Funny thing, though, organic gardening is really not so recent as all that. Thousands of years of gardeners before us grew only with organic methods.  Here we’ll delve a bit into the whys of going organic, and a couple starting points to begin with if you aren’t already on the bandwagon.

It’s Natural: Works With Nature and is Good For You and Your Garden

Many gardeners often ask, “What exactly does organic gardening mean?” The simplest definition is that organic gardening refers to the practice of growing plants without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or other chemical interventions. Instead of relying on artificially manufactured substances, organic gardeners embrace natural methods to nourish and protect their plants. They focus on working in harmony with nature, using techniques that enhance the soil’s fertility and overall ecosystem health.

For example, rather than using chemical fertilizers to boost plant growth, organic gardeners rely on chemical free compost, well-aged manure, and other organic materials that return essential nutrients back to the soil. This method not only feeds the plants but also improves the soil structure, making it healthier for future crops. Similarly, organic gardeners avoid chemical pesticides and instead use natural pest control methods like introducing beneficial insects, rotating crops, and companion planting to keep harmful pests in check.

The organic approach doesn’t just stop at avoiding chemicals—it’s about replenishing the resources that plants consume throughout the growing process. Organic gardeners understand that healthy soil is the foundation of productive and sustainable gardening. As plants draw nutrients from the earth, it’s crucial to give back by adding organic matter such as compost and mulch to keep the soil rich and thriving. This cycle of using and replenishing resources is key to maintaining a balanced, chemical-free garden that works with nature, not against it.

The Hidden Dangers of Chemical Fertilizers and Pesticides

Sure, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are quite effective, but numerous studies have proven them to have terrible side-effects to humans, animals and even the soil. Round-up, for instance, causes numerous negative effects on the soil, effects that include compaction and resultant runoff, the killing of beneficial microbes and bacteria, and the exhaustion of necessary minerals and other nutrients that plants require.

Replenish the Soil and Reap the Rewards

Replenish resources as you use them. Healthy soil means easier and healthier organic gardening. “Feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants“.
It’s really common sense. Plants get their nutrients from the soil. If we use up the nutrients, without replenishing them, our plants will be small, weak, and produce little for yields at harvest time.

Another vital resource, of course is water, making sure you water consistently and evenly goes a long way in growing the best plants you can, plants that don’t have to struggle against drought in the soil are able to put their energy into producing the bests fruits. Interestingly, watering too little or too much can affect even the flavor of the fruit from your plants.

Learn Your Insects: Get Rid of the Bad, Not the Beneficials

Learn your insects! Organic gardening doesn’t mean you have to share your harvest with the bugs, but you will probably have less than pristine looking plants and produce. Since  in organic gardening you are trying to garden in cooperation with nature, sometimes you have to accept the occasional pest in the garden, not taking the typical line of attack that has been popular in recent generations of grabbing the nearest pesticide.

Vigilance in Organic Gardening: Natural Pest Control Starts with Observation

Your first line of defense should be vigilance. Inspect your plants regularly for signs of a problem and take organic methods of action quickly. Keep in mind, though, not every insect is a foe and that action doesn’t necessarily mean pesticide. Just picking bugs and eggs off plants and putting them in a bucket of soapy water is frequently a first step for organic gardeners. Learn which are the beneficial insects and keep them around, they will help do your work for you, getting rid of pests.

Effective Barriers: Protecting Your Garden from Insects Naturally

Floating row covers prevent moths and other insects from landing and laying eggs. Yellow sticky traps can easily catch dozens of flying pests. Foil, coffee can, or PVC pipe collars around the base of plants can stop cut worms and many borers in their tracks. Barriers can be a huge help with seasonal damaging insects, moths, etc.

Diversify Your Garden: The Power of Inter-Planting and Companion Planting

Inter-planting and diversity will protect you from losing an entire crop to an infestation. Large swaths of a single plant are pretty, but are also a landing strip for interested insects. If you mix up your plants then a pest attracted to a certain plant may not find all of that variety and you’ll still end up with at least part of your harvest. When inter-planting it’s a great idea to look into what plants go well together, and even what ones do not, to maximize the health and yield of your plants. Companion planting is another organic method of helping your plants to do their best.  Learn your insects and organic gardening will become easier.

Organic Weed Control Made Easy: Strategies for Healthy Plants and Soil

Weeds are more than just an eyesore in your garden—they actively compete with your plants for essential nutrients, water, and sunlight. By robbing your plants of these vital resources, weeds can severely reduce their vigor, leaving them weaker and less productive. The age-old method of weeding by hand or cultivating the soil between plants with a hoe is one of the most effective and time-tested ways to manage weeds. Not only does this physical effort suppress weed growth, but it also aerates the soil, improving its structure and allowing oxygen and nutrients to reach plant roots more easily.

Pulling weeds or using a hoe can be a great form of exercise for gardeners, providing a satisfying sense of accomplishment and even a workout for your body. However, what happens if maintaining regular weeding becomes a challenge? Whether due to health issues, physical limitations, or simply being pressed for time, many gardeners find it hard to keep up with the constant battle against weeds. It’s easy to fall behind, and once weeds take over, they can quickly become overwhelming. If you find yourself in this situation, there are additional organic methods that can help you manage weeds more effectively without as much physical strain.

Here are some helpful hints on how to control weeds

Organic Mulch

Once you have a handle on the early growth of weeds, for instance, we like to put organic grass clippings around our plants. Not only does this control weeds extremely well, but when rained on or watered the nutrients leech down to the soil and feed the plants. Mulch encourages beneficial earthworm activity by improving the soil tilth and nutrient content. Worms also leave worm castings which are one of the best fertilizers available.

Organic mulches like grass clippings, are beneficial when applied to cool-season vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and English peas in midspring. They help to keep the soil from rapid warming and drying and can extend the growing and harvest periods. By putting grass clippings in your Heirloom vegetable garden, you’ll save hours of time each year.

Black Plastic Mulch

Another barrier to weeds we have used with much success is black plastic mulch. It keeps the soil moist, blocks the weeds, and even heats the soil, which helps plants grow faster. Warm-season vegetables like cucumbers, melons, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant grow better and produce more when grown on black plastic mulch than when grown on bare soil. Transplants can be set through plastic mulch by cutting holes with a utility knife. Use the same tool to plant seeds of widely spaced vegetables like squash and melons. Black plastic mulch can also be used with plastic row tunnels to promote early growth and harvest all the while helping you to control weeds.

Building Healthy Soil: The Foundation of Organic Gardening

Few gardeners are fortunate enough to start with naturally rich, fertile soil. Most of us begin with soil that may be lacking in essential nutrients, poor in structure, or prone to compaction. However, the good news is that even if your soil isn’t perfect, you can improve it over time and transform it into a plant-friendly environment. Turning poor soil into a productive, thriving medium for your plants is not as difficult as it may seem—once you understand the key components of healthy soil and adopt gardening practices that nurture it.

Healthy soil is the foundation of any successful garden, and building it involves more than just adding fertilizers. It requires a combination of enriching the soil with organic matter, fostering beneficial microorganisms, and avoiding practices that degrade its quality. Simple steps like regularly adding compost, using organic mulch, and minimizing tilling can gradually improve soil structure, increase its nutrient content, and promote good aeration and water retention. These practices create an ecosystem where plants can thrive, with soil that supports healthy root growth and nutrient absorption.

Using gardening methods that improve the soil, rather than deplete or harm it, is critical to long-term success. For example, avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can damage the delicate balance of soil life, ensures that your soil remains healthy for years to come. By focusing on soil health as the cornerstone of your gardening efforts, you can create an environment that not only nurtures your plants but also supports a thriving, self-sustaining ecosystem.

A Few Basics for Good Soil:

Minimize Tilling for Healthier Soil

Tilling less often, or avoiding it entirely, helps protect the beneficial insects in your soil. These insects play a vital role in aerating the soil and promoting plant health. Excessive tilling can disrupt this balance, killing off helpful organisms and reducing soil quality over time.

Boost Soil Health with Organic Matter

• Organic matter added to garden soil improves the soil structure and feeds the microorganisms and insects.
• Organic matter improves any type of soil. Compost, leaf mold, manure (use somewhat sparingly) and green manures are all decaying organic matter. They loosen and enrich soil and provide food for the soil dwelling insects. For the best soil, sources of organic matter should be as diverse as possible. Using green mulches like grass clippings, add nutrients, and later when tilled in at the end of the season, add organic matter to the soil as well.
• Organic matter also contains acids that can make plant roots more permeable, improving their uptake of water and nutrients, and can dissolve minerals within the soil, leaving them available for plant roots.

Organic Matter is Absolutely Essential for Good Soil

Although it only makes up a small fraction of the soil (normally 5 to 10 percent), organic matter is absolutely essential. It binds together soil particles into porous crumbs or granules which allow air and water to move through the soil. Organic matter also retains moisture (humus holds up to 90 percent of its weight in water), and is able to absorb and store nutrients. Most importantly, organic matter is food for microorganisms and other forms of soil life.

Worm Castings: Nature’s Perfect Organic Soil Amendment

Worm Castings are an excellent organic soil amendment, hard to find in retail stores, but a great addition to your soil. The nice thing is, you can order them by mail.
An amazing fact about worm castings: God in His infinitely awesome abilities in creation made worms to produce organic fertilizer. Even if what they take in for food has any chemicals or such, it comes out the other end organic, filtered by their amazing digestive system. They have been lab tested over and over, and this is how they always come out, pure and 100% organic.

Worm castings (a.k.a. worm manure, vermicompost, or worm excreta) are rich in plant nutrients, trace minerals and growth enhancers, and incorporating castings into the soil significantly increases microbial life in the root zone. Worm castings are extremely beneficial in that they stimulate plant growth more than any other natural product, enhance the ability of your soil to retain water, and also inhibit root diseases such as root rot. The humus in worm castings removes toxins and harmful fungi and bacteria from the soil. Worm Castings therefore have the ability to fight off plant diseases.

One of the best features of worm castings is you can use as much as you want without the fear of burning tender young plants as other fertilizers are known to do. Unlike other animal manure and artificial fertilizers it is absorbed very easily and almost instantaneously by plants. The amazing thing is, while the nutrients are easily available they are at the same time naturally endowed with a slow release feature, causing the nutrient benefits to last up to 2 months!

Create Your Own Compost: Turn Waste into Garden Gold

Turning kitchen and garden waste into compost, the Black Gold of gardens, is an excellent step we can all take in providing our own organic soil amendments. Why not make this the year to finally try your hand at creating your own compost? You hear about it all the time, you know the benefits, but it seems so daunting to try. There’s plenty of helpful info out there, ideas on simple starting methods for beginners. You have plenty to feed the pile/bin, we all have kitchen scraps, and garden or yard waste to feed the pile with. Give it a shot, you can’t have any less than you do now even if it doesn’t work out!

Books:

– The Complete Compost Gardening Guide

– Composting Made Easy – A Complete Guide To Composting At Home

– Composting for the Absolute Beginner

Organic soil amendments come in many different types, if you have any of your own that you would like to share, please leave a comment below!

Crop Rotation: The Secret to Maintaining Healthy Soil Year After Year

Crop rotation is a systematic approach to deciding which crop to plant where in your vegetable garden from one year to the next. It  is as important a factor in soil health as amendments, and reduces the amount of work you have to put into achieving healthy soil for your plants.

Interesting fact: George Washington Carver was a major pioneer in teaching of crop rotation, a big help in replenishing soil, rejuvenating the yields and success in farming.

Maintain Soil Balance with Crop Rotation and Nitrogen Fixing Plants

Different crops have different nutrient requirements and affect soil balance differently. Some, like corn and tomatoes, are heavy feeders that quickly deplete soil nitrogen and phosphorus. Thus, if you plant corn in the same spot year after year that plot of soil will run low on nitrogen and phosphorus more quickly than other parts of your garden will. By changing the location of corn each year, you’ll be able to renew the plot where it grew the preceding year, so your soil won’t get out of balance.

Following up with nitrogen fixing plants, like beans or peas, in an area which had heavy feeders the year before replenishes the soil.

Rotate by Plant Families to Prevent Pests and Diseases

Plan your rotation by plant families, because pests and diseases will usually affect all members of the same family. For example, Colorado potato beetles like to eat potato plants, but they also enjoy feasting on tomato leaves and eggplant foliage. Since these beetles overwinter in the soil, if you plant eggplant in a spot where you grew potatoes the year before, you could be inviting a beetle problem for your eggplants from the day they’re planted. Likewise, several serious bacterial and fungal diseases overwinter in plant debris in the soil.

Don’t forget, crop rotation is part of building healthy soil which is an ongoing process, one to work at each garden season.

Conclusion

In conclusion, organic gardening is a chemical free approach that not only benefits your plants but also nurtures the ecosystem of your garden. By focusing on soil health, minimizing tilling, rotating crops, and using organic matter like compost and worm castings, you can create an environment that produces healthier, more resilient plants. Organic gardening encourages working with nature rather than against it, providing long term benefits for both the gardener and the garden. Whether you’re just starting out or expanding your garden practices, embracing organic chemical free methods will help ensure the vitality of your plants and the future of your soil.

FAQ: Organic Gardening 101

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