The rewards of an organic garden to your health and eating pleasure are innumerable. You will never accomplish your organic horticulture goals without a bit of effort. This can make you wonder where to begin for growing your own organic garden.
Choose perennials that won’t be taken out by slugs. Snails and slugs can quickly wreak havoc on a garden. These pests are especially attracted to tender sprouts and to delicate, soft leaves. You can discourage snails and slugs from eating your perennials by choosing plants with tougher or distasteful foliage. Some perennial families that snails and slugs won’t eat include achillea, campanula, and helleborus.
Try to have a plan with your garden. A thoughtful plan can remind you of previous plantings and what you will see appearing from the soil in the months of spring and summer. The plan will also help you keep track of your more diminutive plants and smaller groups that could otherwise become lost among a sea of larger plantings.
Knee Pads
A set of comfortable knee pads makes a great investment if your garden is full of plant material that stays low to the ground. Spending lots of time on your knees while horticulture can injure them and create lasting pain. A pair of good gardening knee pads can cushion your knees for more comfort.
A quality garden must be grown from seeds. The environmentally conscious way to start a new garden is to start with seeds. It is common for commercial plants to be packaged in plastic that is not commonly recycled, and therefore, it is better to use seeds or purchase plantings only from merchants who make use of organic packaging.
If you are gardening for the first time ever, read and follow all directions and instructions that come with your chemicals and tools. If you fail to do this, you could cause yourself all sorts of injuries, the most common of which is irritated skin. Wear protective gear, and use the products as directed.
Invest in a quality wheelbarrow and a kneeling stool if horticulture work is going to happen often. Using a large portion of your time near or on the ground working on your garden puts a huge strain on your knees; therefore, having a portable, lightweight garden stool will greatly assist you in making horticulture easier on them. In addition, maintaining a garden typically means moving around heavy dirt and other objects, which makes buying a wheelbarrow a very smart purchase.
Pouring the excess water from your dinner of steamed veggies on them can help. In order to help acidify the soil for plants like gardenias and rhododendrons, you can use coffee and tea grounds. If you are having problems with fungus, you may find that sprinkling Chamomile tea on the plant is effective.
Don’t use broad-spectrum pesticides for your garden. It’s true these pesticides kill the pests you don’t want, but they also lay waste to the advantageous insects that make those same pests a regular meal. The beneficial insects, which kill the pests, are much more sensitive to pesticides than the pests. Using them will reduce your population of good bugs, and increase the bad. This can lead to needing even more pesticides to eliminate the problem insects.
If you have problems keeping the dog out of the garden, spray things like aftershave, perfume or other scents on the grass surrounding the garden. This can make scents that dogs are attracted to, and make your garden less interesting in general for pets.
If you know that you’ll be in the garden for an extended period of time, protect yourself from the sun with proper attire. Choose hats with overlapping brims, don those sunglasses and smear on the sunscreen. Protecting yourself from the sun is the best way to prevent sunburns and skin cancer.
Keep your plants in a warm, moist environment, if possible. They need the temperature to be that warm so that they can grow. Another option is the use heat lamps that will protect your organic plants.
Organic horticulture requires work, effort and research. So you can see these results, you must keep working with them. Now, after reading the tips from this article, you have the knowledge necessary in order to be a successful organic gardener.
Originally posted 2015-04-29 12:30:41.
