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, Marigolds, Organic Gardening

Perennials are plants and flowers which live for two or more years. You can plant them where you'd like to have them grow, and some of them will live, grow, and thrive for twenty years or more. Some perennial plants only live for two to three years, but on average most will live for at least five years. This makes them an excellent investment for long term garden planning.

Since perennial plants tend to be a long term decision though, where you plant them and the types of plants you choose are critical decisions to make during your garden planning process. You won't be happy putting a perennial plant in a prime location for instance, only to find out later you don't like the plant at all and you're unable to easily get rid of it.

Most new gardeners will plant a mixture of annual and perennial plants together in a new garden though, because the annuals give them immediate flower blooms and bursts of color while the perennials are still becoming established. Some perennials won't even bloom for the first year or two either, and this can be frustrating and disappointing for someone when they first plant their gardens.

Most fruits are perennial plants, as are shrubs, bushes and trees. Strawberries and grapes for instance, often don't produce fruits the first year or two they're in the ground. Grapes require some sort of climbing support as well, because they are a vine. Strawberries on the other hand, will send out shoots which take root and start new strawberry plants. You can help encourage your strawberry plants to concentrate on creating fruits by snipping off most of the new shoots that the plant sends out.

Since fruits are high in water content, the plants which grow those fruits require large amounts of water to grow successfully. Fruit plants also require lots of sunlight too - usually at least five to six hours of direct sunlight each day.

Many shade loving plants are perennials as well, such as the various forms hosta plants that can be purchased at almost any local garden center. Verbena is another beautiful, long blooming plant which sometimes comes in perennial form too, and it's especially easy to grow in hot, dry climates.

Some types of annual flowers and plants will act like perennials simply because they reseed themselves each year. The morning glory vine for instance, and four o'clock flowers are two examples of annuals which produce massive numbers of seeds each year. Those seeds drop to the ground and are scarified over the winter, then they start sprouting up on their own the next spring.

Tags: Dianthus Plumarius, Perennials

Gardeners, by their very nature, tend to like wildlife — unless it's the sort that eat their crops and flowers! But with a little forethought, you can add a whole extra dimension to your gardening pleasure and employ a whole army of helpers in the endless battle against pests.

Chief among these helpers will be birds. If you can encourage them to nest in your garden, a single pair of small birds will stuff more than one thousand unwanted bugs from your garden down the expectant throats of their chicks, daily for several weeks. And this is usually at a critical time of year, when the bugs are just getting ready to attack your fruit blossom and newly emerging vegetables. And here's the even better news: with such a convenient supply of baby food, many species will be encouraged to have a second brood of chicks, so you gain twice over!

So how do you encourage birds to nest in your garden? It's a simple matter of bribery: if you feed them with food scraps and seed through the leaner winter months and then provide suitable nesting boxes, come spring, they are very likely to take up residence, particularly if you continue to make food available to the adults.

Having their own adult food on tap allows them to spend all their time scouring your garden of unwanted bugs for their offspring. Certainly, you will have to spend a little on bird seed, but no more than you would spend on pesticides, and you gain immeasurably by the certain knowledge no chemical squirts have touched the fruit and other goodies growing in your garden. It's a shrewd investment that can't be faulted.

Nest boxes are available in all shapes and sizes, tailor-made for different species. But what they all have in common is the need for great care about their location.

They must never be placed where the full mid-day sun can touch them, otherwise the chicks will die of overheating. Nor should they be placed where icy blasts of air can freeze the chicks. The best position of all is in a shady area facing the western sunset and high enough from the ground to deter four legged predators.

If you live in a country where frogs or other amphibians have a taste for slugs and other vegetable eating pests, a small investment in a wildlife pond in a quiet corner of your garden will pay handsome dividends. Whilst they might lurk in the pond all day in a soporific stupor — don't be fooled. Come nightfall, your frogs will be off for a night on the town to dine out on the slugs and other pests, just as the slugs themselves are about to feast on your carefully cultivated cabbages!

A wildlife pond doesn't have to be too fancy. So a simple shallow depression a foot (30cm) or so deep with gently sloping sides, lined with a piece of butyl rubber (isobutylene isoprene) and with a few oxygenating plants, such as the ubiquitous Canadian Pondweed, is all you need.

And, as Kevin Costner said in "Field Of Dreams": they will come. In fact, you'll be amazed how quickly the pond life will move in — apparently out of thin air — even in an urban area.

So, with the birds tackling the bugs during the day and the frog "night shift" guarding your vegetables by night, you can sleep soundly, ready for another day of enjoying your garden.

Tags: Wildlife Garden