| Product: |
Organic Gardening in general |
| Date: |
17/04/01 (142 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Wonderful to be able to live with nature and to encourage it to help you.
Disadvantages: Can be a little labour intensive but it keeps you fit!!
Organic gardening becomes eventually an easy way to life. It can be an exciting challenge to produce crops or plants that have not required any artificial chemicals to fruit or bloom. The finished product is tastier, may be odd shaped but above all does not contain any additives that you don't know about.
I could write for ages on this subject so I will stick to a few points that people mainly find that they end up reverting to artifical preparations for.
Weed control - Areas that are to be dug over for the first time can benefit from being covered over with thick black polythene or old carpets - anything that prevents light and seeds being set down. This area could be ideally left over winter to encourage the weeds and grass underneath to die back and allow the worms and other creatures to do what they do best - convert it back to soil.
It then needs to be dug over thoroughly to about a foot in depth to make sure that all the perrenial weeds and grasses such as cooch, marestail, dock, nettles, brambles and thistles are removed. This bit is hard work but you will reap the benefits in seasons to come as you will only have to spend time lifting the annual weeds.
By providing the soil with lots of organic mulch such as well rotted manure, grass cuttings,straw and even sawdust you can achieve the balance of composition and nutrients you require.
Weed control in borders is helped by close planting to prevent weeds establishing. Putting mulch down between plants such as grasscuttings will eventually feed the soil as well has helping to supress weeds and retain moisture.
Organic fertiliser - Compost comes into it's own here and can be easily made using a compost bin or pile. It needs to be rotated to encourage it to break down and to allow the worms and other creatures to do their work. It can take up to a year to be ready to go onto the soil but is worth waiting for as the result is a wonderful mixture of crumbly material that is
natures own food.
As long as the compost material is not cooked and is organic you can use anything that will eventually biodegrade. Woody stems can be a problem but these can be shredded down if you have a shredder to help. The bottom of the pile or bin needs to be open and in contact with the soil to allow the worms etc to come up and bring what they need back down, eventually converting all that free waste into a beautiful food stuff.
About 20% of our consumer waste is organic and can be used - just think of the landfill site area saving!
Plant foods - can be made from steeping nettles, comfrey and manure together to form a soup. It needs to sit for a few months to really ferment down and then can be strained off and mixed with water to feed tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, etc - anything that needs a boost during the growing season.
Pure comfrey plant food can be made by using an old drainage pipe which has a funnel attached to the bottom end. It needs to be either suspended or stood to allow the comfrey to drain through. This is filled with comfrey and allowed to rot - the ensuing liquid produced will drain through and can be collected into a bucket at the end. This food is highly rich in potassium, nitrogen and other vital ingredients and can be diluted with water and used again as a liquid fertiliser.
Nitrogen rich plants such as comfrey, clover legumes can be grown and either used as a mulch or rotated in the veg. plot to release the much needed nitrates into the ground during the growing season.
Nitrates in the soil and water table are becoming a real problem with intensive methods of farming - we do not need to add to this by purchasing more artificial nitrates when we can use nature to produce it for free.
Many methods of organic gardening use nature to provide and help. This is especially true with pest control.
Nature has its own army of pest controllers such as lace wing larvae, ladybirds, spiders, hedgehogs, frogs, to
ads and birds. By providing a chemical free environment, by planting nectar rich flowering plants, by getting the balance of nature right in your garden the amount of pests will decrease and you will increase the wildlife to your surroundings.
I have always had lots of snails, woodlice and slugs in my garden but because the balance of preditors is good it keeps them at bay to a point that they are not a nuisance. I also do not water freely in summer. I spot water the plants that look like they are desperate, then mulch over to keep that moisture in rather than watering the whole area. This not only saves on water from the water butts but keeps the general ground area too dry to encourage damp loving creatures like snails and slugs.
Grass cuttings make an ideal anti snail and slug mulch as they cannot tolerate the cuttings sticking to their feet!
Organic gardening makes sense - it is a shame that most people do not practise it. It shows just how lazy we have become as a society when you visit a garden centre and see the vast array of pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers etc etc to help us when all we need to do is let nature do the work - ok with a little help and encouragement but that is the ingenious and fun bit!!
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