Depending on the effort you put into it, an organic garden can be a great pleasure or a great pain. The following suggestions will guide you on how to be a very successful organic gardener.
Think about starting plants in pots, and then placing the seedlings in the garden later. Doing this betters your odds of your plants making it to adulthood. In addition, you can shorten the intervals between your plantings. You can plant the seedlings once you have removed the old plants.
Create useful rulers from your tool handles. Tools with long handles, such as a shovel or rake, are absolutely perfect for this job, and make your workload a little bit smaller. All you have to do is lay them on the floor then use a measuring tape to measure their length. Use a bright permanent marker and label the distances. Now when you go garden the next time, you’ll have a giant ruler at your command.
Transplanting plants and bringing them indoors can protect them from harsh winters. You might want to transplant your most valuable varieties. Remember to be gentle when digging up your plants; carefully dig away from the roots and gently place the plant into a container.
Coffee Grounds
If you discover that your soil is very alkaline, take used coffee grounds and mix them thoroughly with your soil. Using coffee grounds is a low-cost way to increase the acidity of the soil. This will allow your vegetables and greenery to really thrive.
If you want an organic way to weed your garden, try “boiling” them. A boiling pot of water is one the best and safest herbicides you can find. Just pour out the water on the weeds being careful to avoid any nearby plants. The boiling water will damage the roots of the weeds and will usually prevent further growth.
Divide your irises. Take clumps that have become overgrown and divvy them up into separate plants. Pick up bulbous irises after the foliage dies. They will literally split in your hand, flowering the next year after replanting. If you have a rhizome you will need to split it with a knife. New pieces should be cut from the outside, then the old center you want to discard. Divide your pieces carefully; they should each have one good quality offshoot apiece. Replant right away.
Put a couple of inches of organic mulch around each of your vegetable plants. The mulch help keeps the soil that is around the plants much more moist for much longer. It also prevents weed growth. This can prevent you from having to constantly pull weeds.
The water that is leftover from the steamed vegetables is great to pour over them. Add coffee grounds or tea leaves to the soil of acid-loving plants like rhododendron and gardenia. Chamomile tea applied to plants can be an effective remedy for fungus problems.
When you are working in your garden, you will want to have all of your tools in a convenient location. Don’t waste thirty minutes looking around for a tool. By keeping your tools in a certain area, they will always be ready whenever you are. You can keep your garden tools in a tool belt, or in your pockets. Another good idea is to keep them all in a bucket that you carry around with you.
Laundry Basket
When it is time to gather your produce, you should use an older laundry basket. It makes a great strainer for your vegetables. Rinse your crops while in the laundry basket to strain the excess water.
Slugs are a nuisance that can be easily remedied with the use of an organic beer tramp. Bury a jar in the garden with it’s mouth open and level to the ground. Fill it with beer to about one inch below the top of the jar. Slugs are attracted to beer. They will crawl into the jar and be trapped.
If you want to sell your crops as organic, you should look into obtaining a certification proving that you are an organic garden. This will up your sales and prove to your loyal customers that what they have been getting is only the best that you possibly could get.
As this article stated, there’s quite a lot involved in successful organic horticulture. It requires patience and work, but it’s worth it to have a successful organic garden. Utilizing the advice provided in this article will definitely help you improve your organic horticulture techniques.