FAQ on Organic Gardens
Organic gardening is a hot topic right now, with many people preferring to eat more organic foods. Generally, organic gardening works with nature instead of against it. It is important to understand what organic gardening is and how it benefits the environment, your family's health and your household budget.
Q: Exactly what is the difference between organic gardening and regular gardening?
A: Organic gardening uses what occurs naturally for pest control, weed abatement, soil enrichment and most organic gardens use heirloom or non-GMO seed for crops.
Q: How do I prepare my soil without commercial fertilizer?
A: Soil preparation is a year round process. Everything, including newspapers can be used to enrich the soil. Lawn clippings, leaves, table scraps, coffee grounds, used tea, sawdust and eggshells can go into the compost pile. Turn daily and add water, and nature takes care of the rest. When it's time to plant, you put the compost onto your garden. Composting animal manure in the compost pile with the other organics was common practice until the 50 years.
Q: How do I control pests without insecticide?
A: There are ways to scare off the little critters without harming your growing garden and without commercial pesticides. Most insects don't like hot and spicy, so whip up a spray to keep them at bay.
Ingredients for natural pesticide
- Garlic
- Onion
- Hot pepper (habanaro, ghost chili, African bird, Thai chili)
- Horseradish
- Vinigar
Procedure
Blend in a blender, strain with a cheese cloth. Thin with vinegar and spray onto plants. You can also soak the herbs in the vinegar for at least three weeks, creating a tincture to use as needed. Discard the herbage into the compost pile.
Q: How do I control weeds?
A: Ground covers work quite nicely to keep weeds out. Comfrey, legumes, marigold, alfalfa, buckwheat, oats and sunflower all have deep roots that pull up nutrients from within the soil making them available for other surrounding plants. By breaking up hard soil deep it allows roots of the other plants to deepen thus providing a nutrient rich crop. By having a thick root system, weeds cannot break through to rob the nutrients from the desired plants. Other plants such as white clover offer living mulch saving you composting time.
Q: Are all animal excrement safe in gardens?
A: At the turn of the 20th century, and for thousands of years before that, animal manure was disposed of by putting it in the compost pile. Fresh manure has too much nitrogen and has digestive enzymes from the animal and is unsuitable for application in a garden. Aged manure that has been allowed to decompose has had bacteria, organic vegetable material and already reduced soil in the mix. Also, the composting process produces heat in the range 40˚-70˚C. According to the USDA, 40˚C must be maintained for at least five consecutive days to kill off weed seeds and pathogenic bacteria. Do not use omnivore or carnivore excrement in your compost unless you are an experience organic gardener.