Organic gardening is the process of growing plants, flowers, vines, trees, bushes, shrubs, fruits, vegetables and anything else you can think of in a completely natural way. In other words: No pesticides, chemicals or harmful substances are used in the entire gardening process. Organic gardening is most used for fruit, vegetable, and herb gardening, because people don't want to have pesticides and chemicals on the foods they eat.

Organic gardening starts with the preparation of your soil. Since you won't be using chemical fertilizers in an organic garden, you'll need to make sure you're soil is as healthy as it can be, so that it can provide all the nutrition your garden plants will need as they grow. Preparing organic garden soil takes a little time and effort, but it's really worth it in the end.

You can create organic garden soil by mixing in healthy rich compost material. Some organic gardeners prefer to create their own compost using special bins or containers. In some places though, you're able to buy organic compost material from other gardeners or garden centers. It's fairly easy to get a start on creating compost though, even without using a special composting bin.

All you need to do is add a few things to your garden bed soil, and let those additives sit for several weeks before you plant. Everything you add to the garden soil should be natural though, because the nutrients are created as these organic items decompose.

First you need to loosen and turn the soil in your garden bed. Then add some organic materials to the bed such as used coffee or tea grounds, sawdust, shredded newspaper, fireplace ashes, or fruit and vegetable matter from your kitchen. You can add one or more of these items at once, but you don't have to add all of them if you don't have them. The smaller you make the material before adding it to the garden bed though, the faster it will turn to compost for you. So if you're using kitchen scraps for instance, try chopping or grating them into smaller bits before tossing them into the garden bed.

After adding the organic material to your garden bed, turn the soil some more so those new items are mixed in and covered decently. Then about two to three times each week, go outside and water the bed, then stir it around a bit again. After about three to four weeks, your bed should be ready to start putting plants or seeds in.

If you prepare your organic garden area in the fall though, before the first hard frost or freeze hits, the soil will be much richer and more ready for planting in the spring.

Tags: Organic Gardening

Fertilizing an organic garden is easier than most people think. Just as you can improve the flavor of vegetables by planting certain plants together, and you can help repel common pests, insects and diseases by planting certain plants together, you can also fertilize your garden naturally using specific plants too.

One of the best fertilizers you can use in a garden of course, is compost. And compost is made with all natural, organic materials such as grass clippings, shredded leaves, sawdust, fireplace ash, and even shredded newspapers. You can also toss in fruit and vegetable matter from the kitchen to help your compost become even more rich and fertile for use in any area of your garden.

Besides compost though, you can actually just put certain plants into your garden area to help fertilize the soil, and provide additional nutrients your plants need.

Alfalfa for instance, is a wonderful hardy plant which can survive in almost any conditions, yet it's very high in a large number of vitamins and minerals that are beneficial to your soil in general. Alfalfa will provide your soil with nitrogen, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium for instance, plus it's long strong roots will help break up hard, rocky, clay like soil too.

German Chamomile is an annual growing herb which will reseed itself each year if you leave some of the flowers unpicked each season. This herb helps contribute calcium, potassium, and sulfer to your soil. It's also excellent for improving the taste of cucumbers, cabbage, and onions. A perennial version is the Roman chamomile, and it will grow in almost any kind of soil with full sunlight.

Clover is an excellent addition to any garden. It has long been considered a source of "green manure" and can be a companion plant to almost anything. In fact, it's particularly useful for increasing the soil fertility of grapes. Clover will attract many beneficial insects to your garden too.

Comfrey is another herb which has wonderful medicinal healing properties, plus it provides your garden soil with calcium, potassium, and phosphorous. This herb likes to grow in moist areas.

Kelp is a natural seaweed which works wonderfully both as a fertilizer and a pest repellant. You can put a natural kelp supplement pill into the soil near any plants to help them grow more beautifully, and you can even drop one into a flower vase to help your cut flowers live longer. Put kelp into a tea mixture for spraying, and it feeds the plants through their leaves while also repelling a variety of common garden pests and bugs too.

Tags: Alfalfa, Organic Gardening, Plant Foods, Natural Fertilizers

When you decide to try your hand at organic gardening, one of the most frustrating parts of the entire process is trying to control pests, disesases, and other miscellaneous problems that come up with any form of gardening. Thankfully though, there are natural techniques which can be used to solve many of these common gardening problems, and one of those techniques is known as companion planting.

Companion planting is the process of planting specific flowers, herbs, and vegetables together in a way that either enhances the taste of the vegetables, and/or serves to help naturally control common pest and bug related problems in the garden.

Companion planting is important and useful for natural garden pest control, but it's also very important in vegetable gardening too. When you decide to plant two or more vegetable plants close together in your garden, you could end up with either a very bad tasting vegetable, or an extremely good one. And how your vegetables taste is dependant upon which companion plants you chose to plant together.

If for instance, you plant basil close to your tomatoes, or put them together into the same container garden, you can enhance the flavor of the tomatoes - particularly when using them to make home made sauces such as spaghetti sauce.

Chives is another excellent companion plant for tomatoes as well as carrots. Not only will the flavor improve, the growth of these plants will too. Chives also helps to keep aphids away from tomatoes, and they're thought to help keep carrot rust flys away too.

Chives can even help prevent black spot on roses. They need to be planted near the roses for two or three years before they begin to help prevent this common disease though.

Planting cabbage with celery, dill, onions or potatoes will benefit all these plants, but trying to plant cabbage too close to tomatoes or strawberries may cause problems with both growth and production.

Marigolds, also known as Calendula, are a very common flower to use for repelling pests around your home and garden. These little flowers have been used for this very purpose for centuries. You can scatter them throughout your yard and garden to help repel a variety of common bugs and pests. You need to plant marigolds which have a scent though, or else they won't work to repel the bugs. Some people don't like the scent of marigold flowers either though, so if you've never smelled them yourself, you may want to before planting too many.

Tags: Companion Plants, Organic Gardening, Marigolds