When you first plant your new vegetable garden, it almost looks bare. The vegetable plants may be tiny still, or not even sprouted yet, and since you recently turned the soil and made the planting rows, there are also no weeds growing either.

For some people, just the fact that weeds create green in their garden is enough for them to allow the weeds to continue growing. Some weeds are even beautiful in their own rights too, and many gardeners are hard pressed to pull something out that looks pretty.

When you're growing vegetables in a garden though, particularly if you're growing the vegetables organically, letting weeds grow can create a large variety of problems.

The first problems weeds will create for you is watering. Since most weeds consume large amounts of water, they'll often steal the water from your vegetables, and this will stunt the growth of your vegetable plants and sometimes even make them not bear anything for harvesting as well.

Another big problem weeds create in a vegetable garden is nutrients. Like the water, weeds will steal essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals from the soil that your vegetables need to grow healthy and strong. And if the weeds are stealing it all, there may not be enough left for your vegetables to grow well, if at all.

Last but not least, weeds also create massive pest control problems. When weeds crop up in the vegetable garden - especially if there are lots of them growing - they will attract a wide variety of pests and bugs into your vegetable garden. And those bugs and pests will start munching happily away on the stalks, leaves, and stems of your vegetable plants. Some of them will even start eating into the growing vegetables themselves, ruining them for your family's eating enjoyment.

Now, the reasons above are the exact reasons you create a vegetable garden with rows of mounded soil.

By creating mounds of soil which the vegetables grow on, you're able to let the water reach their roots much faster. Because when you start watering your vegetable garden, the water will naturally flow into and fill up the lower lying areas first. If you watch this process while watering your garden, you'll see that the water starts seeping into the mounded soil at the sides, underneath the top of your vegetable plants. In other words: Where the roots are.

The other benefit of planting your vegetables in rows of this sort though, is easy weed control. If you space your vegetable growing mounds far enough apart, you're able to walk through every few days with a simple garden hoe, and scrape out any weeds which might be starting to crop up in the lower lying areas.

This makes weeding the vegetable garden a fairly quick and simple process, as long as you make sure to pull or hoe the weeds regularly. Once a week minimum, but if you have a few minutes, do a quick pass with your hoe a few times each week to keep the weeds from invading your garden.

Tags: Vegetable Garden

Another thing that new organic gardeners become confused about, and sometimes even frustrated with, is figuring out how to control pests and bugs in their gardens. It doesn't matter if you're growing roses, annuals, perennials, bushes, trees, vegetables or something else… all plants have one or more bugs which seem to like to feed on either the plant leaves and stems, the flowers themselves, or both.

The most natural way to control pests in your garden is to simply hand pick the bugs off of leaves and flowers as you find them. This is a time consuming process for large gardens though, and many people do not like controlling pests this way alone. Thankfully there are many other things you can do to help with the process naturally though.

One step you'll need to take is effective weed control. Be sure to leave enough space between your plantings to allow yourself room to pull up weeds as you see them. In vegetable gardens particularly, it's helpful to leave a wide enough space between the rows which will allow you to take a hoe to the area, because this makes weeding go much faster. If you pull or hoe weeds while they're still quite young and small, you'll see the best results too. Because they come out of the ground much easier, and they don't have a chance to start dropping seeds and drawing in a lot of bugs and pests to the area.

Another natural way to control pests though, is through planting itself. By planting certain herbs and flowers around your garden, you can naturally control and even repel a wide variety of common garden pests.

Planting chives around your apple trees for instance, will help prevent scab. And if you plant chives around your roses, they help prevent black spot.

Elderberry is a plant which can be used to get rid of garden moles. Just stick branches and leaves from this plant down into the mole holes, and they'll leave the garden. You can also make a tea or wash with the leaves from this plant, and it will help repel aphids, carrot root fly, peach tree borers, and cucumber beetles too.

Garlic is another wonderful, all natural repellant for your garden too. The flavor of garlic can be abosorbed by other plants though, so don't plant it near any vegetables that might taste bad with a hint of garlic flavor in them.

Lemon Balm is another wonderful, all natural herb which works excellently as a repellant for a variety of things. You can sprinkle lemon balm leaves throughout your garden to repel a number of different bugs and pests, and you can even rub the crushed leaves on your skin to prevent mosquitoe bites too.

Tags: Natural Pest Control, Organic Gardening

Rock gardening is an easy way to make your lawn and garden beautiful, yet keep it very low maintenance. Rock gardens are particularly useful for areas of your yard which tend to be quite dry, but they're also quite beautiful in water run off areas too, because you can design them to look like miniature river beds.

Creating a rock garden isn't too difficult, but there is some planning involved. The first step to planning your rock garden is to select the area which you plan to place it. You'll also want to decide on the types of plants you'll have in your rock garden, and what kind of rocks you'd like to have as well.

In most cases, little river rocks and pebbles are excellent to use for a general rock garden bed. You may want to select your rocks and pebbles based on color or uniformity of size and shape, or you might want to simply go out and collect a variety of interesting rocks to put into the garden instead.

The most attractive rock gardens usually have a base rock bed of small pebbles and stones though, and a variety of plants cropping up between them. Then larger, more interesting elements are placed into the rock garden as focal points, shade areas, and to simply make the rock garden more attractive.

Some rock gardens for instance, have a few larger rocks or even small boulders placed in strategic areas to create both interest and variety in the garden. Placing small boulders in your rock garden also makes it easy to add a small fountain or trickling stream too, plus you'll be able to plant moss and other interesting plants on the boulders themselves close to the water.

Once you've chosen the location for your rock garden though, you'll need to fully clear the area as best as you can. Remove all weeds and as much of the roots from previous weeds and plants as you can, then remove any other unwanted debris. You'll be left with a fairly mundane dirt lot, but this is the blank canvas you'll be able to create your beautiful rock garden in.

After the garden area has been cleared, you'll need to place your plants into this area. Unlike other gardens though, a rock garden tends to have small plants that sprout up here and there. So you don't want to place too many plants, and you don't want them to be too close together either. Just scatter a few in various areas of the new garden plot.

After you have your plants in the ground, if you plan to place larger boulders in the rock garden, put those in their chosen locations first. Then start spreading your base rock or pebbles. Make the rock layer as thick as you'd like, and be sure to get the rocks in close to the base of your new plants and boulders too. Rock garden plants usually like to climb over, around, and through the rock bed that you create, so don't be afraid of putting the rocks too close.

Now you simply need to place any finishing touches or focal points into your rock garden. You can place water elements, interesting pieces of wood or even old wagon wheels if you'd like.

Tags: Rock Gardening