It's really no secret that not everyone has a green thumb. Some people couldn't grow mold if their basement flooded. Gardening is really an acquired skill and not something you luck into. So if you want to grow a garden but just don't have the confidence or skill-set, use the tips provided below to beef up on your organic gardening.
If you are on a budget and would like to purchase a soaker hose, but can't afford the expense of the hose, try this less expensive technique that will get the job done with less money. Purchase foam pipe insulation, the kind that is sold to keep water pipes from freezing, instead of expensive soaker hoses. It works the same but at half the cost. Plus the foam will eventually degrade into the ground and aerate the soil.
A great tip when starting your own organic garden is to sprinkle milled sphagnum moss on your seeds in order to prevent damping-off. Damping-off is a fungal disease that will cause your seeds and seedlings to rot. If your seeds need light, you should sprinkle this moss before dropping your seeds in the moss.
Plant slightly more than you will need. Pests and poor weather can diminish yields from your garden, especially if you are new to organic gardening. To account for this possibility, plant a little more than what you will need. However, don't go overboard, if it is successful, you could have more vegetables than you could possibly use.
Get rid of slugs and snails in the organic garden. As small as they are, slugs and snails can eat entire plants in one night. They thrive in moist conditions below 75 degrees. The best (and possibly most humane way) is to use beer traps to rid your garden of slugs and snails. Simply place stale beer in a shallow pan, the lip of which should be at ground level. The slugs and snails are attracted to the beer and will crawl in. This way they will leave this world happy and inebriated.
A great way to calculate the timing for planting your plants in an organic garden is to use a seed-starting chart. You should do your research and fill in the chart in advance. Once you have it, you can use the chart to plan your planting through the entire season.
When planting your tomatoes in your organic garden, add compost around the stem and trim the upper leaves. This will assist your tomato plants in growing in the best way that they possibly can. You should aim to do these things as soon as the first fruit begins to ripen.
Attract positive bugs to your garden. Bugs like lady-bugs actually hunt natural predators to your plants; aphids and caterpillars are just some of the nasty critters that can go through a garden and eat the leaves of the plants. Lady bugs are the natural predators to such pests and help the growth of a good healthy garden by consuming pests.
Soaker hoses can make an outstanding addition to almost any organic garden. Soaker hoses allow the gardener to provide low-pressure watering over long periods of time to the plants that need it. When they take the place of hours of fussy hand-watering, such hoses are well worth the investment the gardener makes in them.
When growing an organic garden, be careful when treating pests. You want to use the least-harmful pollutant-free products. First, try several methods such as physical removal, different types of barriers, or even traps. If those fail, try biological controls. Then if that fails, try botanical or mineral-based pesticides.
Be aware of what your plants will become when they grow to adulthood in your organic garden. This is so you can take their adult size into consideration when deciding where to plant them in your garden. Try layering them by height and blooming time for a bit of emphasis and constant pops of color.
Organic gardens are perfect for gourmet cooking. If you plan to use some your garden for this type of cooking, try growing your own organic herbs. They make great landscaping plants too. They can add fresh flavors to foods, provide natural medicinal products, and provide fragrances. Most don't even require attention to grow.
Discourage rabbits from using your garden as a snack bar. Rabbits will take advantage of your organic garden if you give them the chance. They don't tend to discriminate between certain foods, eating anything that they encounter. Blood meal, wood ashes, hot pepper flakes, chili powder or garlic powder sprinkled around your plants will deter them. You can also sprinkle black pepper directly on a plant, which will give the rabbit a sneezing fit.
Developing a skill-set in gardening does not mean you have to possess an aptitude for agriculture, in general. As long as you can follow some fairly basic directions, you should have no trouble, whatsoever, planting and growing a successful garden that is 100% organic. So here's to your success!
