There are many different reasons why one would might prefer organic horticulture methods over more traditional approaches. Some of the most popular reasons include concerns about chemicals, health problems and the environment. There is also the fact that maintaining an organic garden is inexpensive. Read on to learn a few tips if you are thinking about growing your own organic garden.
When winter arrives, transfer some plants into the house to save them. Your best bet would be try to save the best or most hearty plants. Dig around roots carefully before transferring to a pot.
Before you plant anything in your garden, have the soil checked. Soil analysis costs a little money, but the report can inform you how to enrich your soil and open the door to a lush garden. A lot of cooperative extension offices can provide this service to you and it is worth knowing what you need to do in order to avoid ruining your plants.
If growing vegetables, make sure they are in a location in your garden where they will be exposed daily to at least six hours of the sun. Proper sunlight is a prerequisite for proper growth. Some flowers have the same requirement for growth.
Your plants need to be kept dry, but sill receiving a good amount of air. Excess moisture creates an appealing environment for disease and parasites. In fact, fungi love a wet plant and can cause a great deal of damage. Be sure to prevent the growth of fungus with a spray that will inhibit their growth.
Remember to place a layer of mulch over the soil around your vegetables, approximately 2 inches deep. The mulch will help keep the soil moist for longer periods of time. In addition, it will keep the weeds from growing. This can prevent you from having to constantly pull weeds.
Read instructions before using any gardening tool you aren’t familiar with, including pesticides or other chemicals. Use the tools only as directed in the instructions. You might end up damaging your plants or getting a skin irritation. So make sure you take precautions, follow the simple directions and be safe.
Invest in a kneeling stool, and a wheelbarrow to work in the garden. Horticulture can be very tough on the knees as you spend much time leaning near the ground, so a portable stool can make all the difference to your comfort. Also, horticulture can involve a lot of heavy lifting and moving items, therefore a robust wheelbarrow can make that aspect much easier.
Pectrum Pesticides
Do not use broad-spectrum pesticides within your garden. Broad-spectrum pesticides will kill insects that are helpful to your garden as well as the harmful ones. Many times good bugs will be more sensitive to harmful pesticides than the ones you are trying to get rid of. If your good bug population goes down, your problem will only get worse. When this happens, you will spray another round of pesticides to get rid of the pests, thus creating a never-ending cycle for yourself.
Gardening should be a relaxing activity. There are a wide variety of things you can do to release stress and relax. Horticulture is a relatively easy way to pursue this goal. It is not prohibitively expensive, and has numerous benefits. Great satisfaction will come from raising produce and flowers in your own environment.
In your flower beds and garden, utilize a few inches of organic mulch. Mulch discourages weeds and helps retain moisture while adding nutrients to your flower bed. This will also give a nice, professional appearance to your garden all year.
Pine mulch can be highly effective under the right conditions. Many types of plants thrive in soil that has high acid levels. If this is the case, use pine needles to mulch your beds. Cover your beds with two inches of needles; acid will be dispersed into the soil as they decompose.
Coffee Grounds
Mix used coffee grounds into your soil. Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plant growth. Many times, nitrogen is a limiting nutrient in soils. Adding coffee grounds or compost can add nitrogen to your soils will help your plants grow tall and healthy.
Apply equal portions of dried plant material and green into your compost pile. Examples of green plant material are spent flowers, fruit and vegetable waste, grass clippings, weeds, and leaves. Dried materials are things like hay, wood shavings, cardboard and paper. Certain substances will undermine your composting efforts and cancel out any benefits; these include meat, charcoal, ash or plants that have diseases or fungal growths.
A good thing to know when it comes to your organic garden, and running it, is to, a couple times a day, lightly ruffle the seedlings with cardboard or your hand. That may sound like a silly thing to do, but it’s been proven to help plants grow larger than they would otherwise.
When choosing plants, dig a little deeper. Look out for green starts that are lush that might have bad root systems when you start purchasing tomato seedlings to help your organic garden prosper. The reason is because these particular starts will stay on the seedlings for weeks, which will not allow the seedlings to grow until these starts are gone.
If you plant tomatoes, make sure you plant a second batch roughly three weeks after the first ones were done. The reason for this is because it helps to prevent the entire harvest from producing all at once. Additionally, if weather or something else ruins one harvest, you still get a second chance to get a good tomato crop.
If you start implementing the organic gardening advice included in this article today, you can look forward to having a healthy, productive, toxic-free garden in the near future. You might actually notice more wildlife in and around your garden due to your natural gardening methods.