In organic gardening, soil quality decides vegetable quality. That’s why you need good quality compost to keep the soil productive for organic vegetable gardening.
Compost can be made from leaves, dead flowers, vegetable scraps, fruit rinds, grass clippings and manure. The ideal organic soil has a dark color, sweet smell and is full of earthworms. Some soil may need more natural additives such as bonemeal, rock phosphates or greensand. A simple soil test will tell you the pH balance and which nutrients you need to use.
I eat organic foods whenever possible. I’m going to be making a vegetable garden that is pesticide-free and, therefore, organic. However, I do know that chemicals linger in non-organic produce (which is, of course, why I don’t buy it!). Will compost made from non-organic foods compromise the “organicity” of my garden and vegetables? How do you know? Thanks!
There will be so little pesticides left after it is broken down that it shouldn’t matter. In addition, the amount taken up by new plants growing in the future from that compost would be very small.
I’ve always been interested in growing my own pesticide free organic vegetables, but it always seemed like such a tough thing to just pick up and start.
I live in central Florida on near the coast and its typical florida weather here. Could someone point me in the direction of how to start a vegetable garden particularly full of peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce?
oh my stars the best I’ve found is Mel Bartholemew’s Square Foot Gardening. Various books free from the library or order on-line from his website or used through Amazon.com
The procedures in his new book is VERY simple. Take my word from someone who put together 3 box frames and mixed the Mel’s Mix anyone could do it.
Yes the grass absorbs the chemicals. I would not use them in the organic garden. There are options for him that work just as well as the chemicals. Check out these links.
Simple question, long and complicated answer–learning gardening is a life-long process–but I’ll keep the answer short. Basically, buy large plastic containers or use bushel baskets which are best for tomatoes. There is less evaporation from plastic than clay containers. You will need “potting soil” which is very different from top soil which has a clay base and will turn hard in a container. Next read labels til you want to drop dead. A lot of feeds and pest control bottles will say if the product is environmentally friendly. Water frequently, sometimes twice a day in August.
Frequent nurseries and talk to employees about organic pot gardening. Go to a bookstore and flip through books. Surf The Old Farmer’s Almanac website, http://www.almanac.com. Hope this gives you a good start.
Does anyone have ideas to keep the slugs and snails from eating up my garden without using chemicals? I don’t want to slaughter all the little critters, just keep them away from my plants and vegetables. They’ve eaten up my new young sunflowers already. Thank you.
for natural control where you do not kill the slugs (but they will be killed by predators-nature is not cruelty free, ever) encourage toads, lightning bugs and other predators of slugs and their eggs into your garden. this can take a year pr more if your garden is not already in decent ecological balance. Leave tall places in the garden for the predators to hide and have shallow pans of water about so they have something to drink. Toads also like piles of stones in shady places.
If you want to control the slugs for this planting season put down a board and check under it daily. Remove any slugs you see and put them in salt of wood ash to kill them. if you don’t want to kill them than move them to neighbor’s yard so they eat the neighbors plants and not yours (which is a decidedly unfriendly thing to do but at least you won’t be killing the slugs. But realize if you do not control the slugs by killing them they will continue to reproduce and eat more and more in your garden)
I’m trying to grow a completely organic/cruelty free vegetable garden (ie no bunny slaughter;) and need suggestions on how to keep my local rabbits Ouuuttt..
I’ve planted marigolds throughout… am spraying a mixture of cayenne and garlic powder with a squirt of dish soap on the seedlings and as a barrier around the garden… Plan to soak corn cobs in vinegar and mix throughout… And I’ve even read that pee soaked kittie litter freaks the lil’ buggers out as well… When I can afford it (I was trying to go the free route with the entire garden but it looks as though I’ll have to spring for it) I’m getting chicken wire but for now I need other suggestions to keep it free and clear;)
Oh… And does human pee keep them away?? Have you tried it? hahahahah… I’d totally pee on a bush for a bush load of veggies!!
Not peeing ON the veggies… heheh… Just a few yards away from the garden;)
This may sound nuts, but planting marigolds near your tomatoes keeps most bugs away from them.. There’s lots of other flowers that detract bugs from vegtables, but I can’t think of them at the moment. But your local nursery should be able to tell you.
“How to start a vegetable garden in the backyard in the fall”
Before I start, let me congratulate you on taking steps in wanting to learn how to grow a garden. Gardening is a fun activity that offers benefits that go beyond the obvious. The rewards of gardening will come as a big surprise. The benefits of growing food at home are that you lose weight easily by gardening, the food remains pesticide-free and is always fresh, that it contains a little sunshine and vitamin D, and that you save money at the grocery store. Growing a garden can be expensive so you need to budget how much you expect to spend. The budget should be 300 dollars or less. Also, you need to write a list of what you will purchase. You will need to have soil, seeds, rake, hoe, watering can, small fence, and gloves. Since you’re new to gardening, I suggest you to start with a small garden.
The first thing you need to do is to find an area in the yard you would like to plant. An area 30 feet square should be enough. You may want to consider setting up a fence for protection from the small animals, such as cats. Some sunlight is important for vegetables to receive, so the garden needs to be planted far away from the shade of trees. The garden should get at least five hours of sunlight each day, just like we should get eight hours of sleep.
After choosing the location that suits you, the second step is making sure that your small house houses some necessary useful items needed for the ground. Find a rake. Rake up the leaves fallen on the ground. Once you are done, go back to your small house. Put the rake back and find a hoe. Use the hoe to cut weeds that grow around.
The third consideration is soil. It is important to know what you would like to plant because different plants require different soils. Since you would like to plant vegetables, sandy loam is the best to buy. Clay soil is not good for vegetable growth because it drains slowly. Sandy soil is absorbs the water too fast, and that is not good for vegetable growth neither. Silt soil is okay to plant vegetables, but not recommended. If the soil in backyard is clay or sandy, they can be enriched by adding an organic matter. Whatever soil you get, spread it in the ground.
Before plant the seeds into the ground, place them on sun porch for thirty minutes, so they don’t get weak. After thirty minutes, plant them about 12mm into the ground. You may need a ruler for measurement. Spread them along Afterwards,
After few hours, water every seed to grow. It has been said that water is the most important for plant growth. On the first day of gardening, it is needed to water because the soil is dry. Weekly watering is a must; however, never water when the soil is already wet. If you do, the roots will begin to die. Too much or little water is not healthy for plant growth. Other than buying a moisture meter for checking, take a long screwdriver and stick it into the garden soil. If it does not goes in easily, you need to water more.
Lastly, plants growth can depend on the availability of sun. The plants need light. They grow by the process of photosynthesis by converting sunlight energy and helps plants grow. I’m sure you have learned this in middle school so I don’t owe you any more explanation. The garden should get at least five hours of sunlight just like we should get eight hours of sleep.
Gardening is not an easy activity, but it is fun to learn. You learn about Gardening takes time, so be patient. Without these necessary steps, the vegetables are nothing more than a tiny seed.
You only need four steps, each of them are important to follow so your garden will grow in a good condition. If you follow my instructions as well, I guarantee you that healthy garden crops will grow in abundance in your garden within 7 days. After all, gardening saves money!
Imagine what it would be like to be a vegetable. You are sitting quietly in the place where you live, the place where you have lived your entire life in complete harmony with the earth. You have everything you could possibly wish for. Suddenly, an enormous hand rips you out of your comfortable place. The betrayal is made even worse by the fact that this same hand is the one that brought you water all through the heat of the summer, that fed you when the soil nutrients were poor.
Once you have been ripped from your home, you are forced to bathe in cold water. Then you are laid, utterly naked, on a sterile white board. You see the flashing of a large gleaming knife as it dismembers you piece by piece, starting at your toes and working its way up your body. Fluids ooze out of you as the pain mounts. The last thing you see is the blade coming down on your head.
This is the sad, short, and painful life of a vegetable in our supposedly health-conscious society. Of course, not all vegetables end up like this. If they�re lucky, they get to decay, forgotten in the bottom of the refrigerator. No one knows when they lose consciousness as the molds slowly infest their chilly bodies, gradually turning them to mush.
Shocked? You should be. Vegetables have feelings too, and yet they are raised in inhumane conditions, forced to live outside in dirt and mud, and, in even the best of “organic” gardens, allowed only manure to eat.
Vegetables are supposed to be “healthy” food, but what kind of health can you get from eating vegetables? Even nutritionists admit that meat is higher in protein and grains are higher in carbohydrates than most vegetables. Supposedly vegetables are valuable for their vitamin content. But any one of us can walk into a grocery store and buy vitamins that are derived from non-vegetable, cruelty-free sources.
End the madness now! Stop eating your vegetable brothers and sisters! Support vegetable rights! (We have animal rights and mineral rights, why neglect vegetable rights?)
yes, i was being sarcastic.
but it’s based on real thoughts. although i can prove them wrong now.
1.vegetables can’t process pain, because they don’t have a brain to do so. they don’t have nerves either.
2.vegetables can’t see a gleaming knife coming at their toes and slowly dismembering them since they don’t have eyes.
3.vegetable rights is real and is complete bull shit.
Looking for an organic gardening book that you can recommend to learn more about pesticide-free gardening.
In organic gardening, soil quality decides vegetable quality. That’s why you need good quality compost to keep the soil productive for organic vegetable gardening.
Compost can be made from leaves, dead flowers, vegetable scraps, fruit rinds, grass clippings and manure. The ideal organic soil has a dark color, sweet smell and is full of earthworms. Some soil may need more natural additives such as bonemeal, rock phosphates or greensand. A simple soil test will tell you the pH balance and which nutrients you need to use.
I eat organic foods whenever possible. I’m going to be making a vegetable garden that is pesticide-free and, therefore, organic. However, I do know that chemicals linger in non-organic produce (which is, of course, why I don’t buy it!). Will compost made from non-organic foods compromise the “organicity” of my garden and vegetables? How do you know? Thanks!
There will be so little pesticides left after it is broken down that it shouldn’t matter. In addition, the amount taken up by new plants growing in the future from that compost would be very small.
I’ve always been interested in growing my own pesticide free organic vegetables, but it always seemed like such a tough thing to just pick up and start.
I live in central Florida on near the coast and its typical florida weather here. Could someone point me in the direction of how to start a vegetable garden particularly full of peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce?
oh my stars the best I’ve found is Mel Bartholemew’s Square Foot Gardening. Various books free from the library or order on-line from his website or used through Amazon.com
The procedures in his new book is VERY simple. Take my word from someone who put together 3 box frames and mixed the Mel’s Mix anyone could do it.
My vegetable garden is organic, and I don’t want to add chemicals, so I want to know if I should allow the grass clippings to be added to my compost.
Yes the grass absorbs the chemicals. I would not use them in the organic garden. There are options for him that work just as well as the chemicals. Check out these links.
Can anyone recommend a good gardening book for complete beginners – who want to use organic/environmentally friendly/chemical-free methods.
I want to try and grow some vegetables in pots and grow bags, but I know nothing at all about gardening.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Simple question, long and complicated answer–learning gardening is a life-long process–but I’ll keep the answer short. Basically, buy large plastic containers or use bushel baskets which are best for tomatoes. There is less evaporation from plastic than clay containers. You will need “potting soil” which is very different from top soil which has a clay base and will turn hard in a container. Next read labels til you want to drop dead. A lot of feeds and pest control bottles will say if the product is environmentally friendly. Water frequently, sometimes twice a day in August.
Frequent nurseries and talk to employees about organic pot gardening. Go to a bookstore and flip through books. Surf The Old Farmer’s Almanac website, http://www.almanac.com. Hope this gives you a good start.
Does anyone have ideas to keep the slugs and snails from eating up my garden without using chemicals? I don’t want to slaughter all the little critters, just keep them away from my plants and vegetables. They’ve eaten up my new young sunflowers already. Thank you.
for natural control where you do not kill the slugs (but they will be killed by predators-nature is not cruelty free, ever) encourage toads, lightning bugs and other predators of slugs and their eggs into your garden. this can take a year pr more if your garden is not already in decent ecological balance. Leave tall places in the garden for the predators to hide and have shallow pans of water about so they have something to drink. Toads also like piles of stones in shady places.
If you want to control the slugs for this planting season put down a board and check under it daily. Remove any slugs you see and put them in salt of wood ash to kill them. if you don’t want to kill them than move them to neighbor’s yard so they eat the neighbors plants and not yours (which is a decidedly unfriendly thing to do but at least you won’t be killing the slugs. But realize if you do not control the slugs by killing them they will continue to reproduce and eat more and more in your garden)
I’m trying to grow a completely organic/cruelty free vegetable garden (ie no bunny slaughter;) and need suggestions on how to keep my local rabbits Ouuuttt..
I’ve planted marigolds throughout… am spraying a mixture of cayenne and garlic powder with a squirt of dish soap on the seedlings and as a barrier around the garden… Plan to soak corn cobs in vinegar and mix throughout… And I’ve even read that pee soaked kittie litter freaks the lil’ buggers out as well… When I can afford it (I was trying to go the free route with the entire garden but it looks as though I’ll have to spring for it) I’m getting chicken wire but for now I need other suggestions to keep it free and clear;)
Oh… And does human pee keep them away?? Have you tried it? hahahahah… I’d totally pee on a bush for a bush load of veggies!!
Not peeing ON the veggies… heheh… Just a few yards away from the garden;)
Plantskydd
We use a lot down here in NZ and its an american product
http://www.treeworld.com/
Getting ready to grow a backyard vegetable garden and I want it to be free of any chemicals.
This may sound nuts, but planting marigolds near your tomatoes keeps most bugs away from them.. There’s lots of other flowers that detract bugs from vegtables, but I can’t think of them at the moment. But your local nursery should be able to tell you.
“How to start a vegetable garden in the backyard in the fall”
Before I start, let me congratulate you on taking steps in wanting to learn how to grow a garden. Gardening is a fun activity that offers benefits that go beyond the obvious. The rewards of gardening will come as a big surprise. The benefits of growing food at home are that you lose weight easily by gardening, the food remains pesticide-free and is always fresh, that it contains a little sunshine and vitamin D, and that you save money at the grocery store. Growing a garden can be expensive so you need to budget how much you expect to spend. The budget should be 300 dollars or less. Also, you need to write a list of what you will purchase. You will need to have soil, seeds, rake, hoe, watering can, small fence, and gloves. Since you’re new to gardening, I suggest you to start with a small garden.
The first thing you need to do is to find an area in the yard you would like to plant. An area 30 feet square should be enough. You may want to consider setting up a fence for protection from the small animals, such as cats. Some sunlight is important for vegetables to receive, so the garden needs to be planted far away from the shade of trees. The garden should get at least five hours of sunlight each day, just like we should get eight hours of sleep.
After choosing the location that suits you, the second step is making sure that your small house houses some necessary useful items needed for the ground. Find a rake. Rake up the leaves fallen on the ground. Once you are done, go back to your small house. Put the rake back and find a hoe. Use the hoe to cut weeds that grow around.
The third consideration is soil. It is important to know what you would like to plant because different plants require different soils. Since you would like to plant vegetables, sandy loam is the best to buy. Clay soil is not good for vegetable growth because it drains slowly. Sandy soil is absorbs the water too fast, and that is not good for vegetable growth neither. Silt soil is okay to plant vegetables, but not recommended. If the soil in backyard is clay or sandy, they can be enriched by adding an organic matter. Whatever soil you get, spread it in the ground.
Before plant the seeds into the ground, place them on sun porch for thirty minutes, so they don’t get weak. After thirty minutes, plant them about 12mm into the ground. You may need a ruler for measurement. Spread them along Afterwards,
After few hours, water every seed to grow. It has been said that water is the most important for plant growth. On the first day of gardening, it is needed to water because the soil is dry. Weekly watering is a must; however, never water when the soil is already wet. If you do, the roots will begin to die. Too much or little water is not healthy for plant growth. Other than buying a moisture meter for checking, take a long screwdriver and stick it into the garden soil. If it does not goes in easily, you need to water more.
Lastly, plants growth can depend on the availability of sun. The plants need light. They grow by the process of photosynthesis by converting sunlight energy and helps plants grow. I’m sure you have learned this in middle school so I don’t owe you any more explanation. The garden should get at least five hours of sunlight just like we should get eight hours of sleep.
Gardening is not an easy activity, but it is fun to learn. You learn about Gardening takes time, so be patient. Without these necessary steps, the vegetables are nothing more than a tiny seed.
You only need four steps, each of them are important to follow so your garden will grow in a good condition. If you follow my instructions as well, I guarantee you that healthy garden crops will grow in abundance in your garden within 7 days. After all, gardening saves money!
sandy soil drains water too fast
Imagine what it would be like to be a vegetable. You are sitting quietly in the place where you live, the place where you have lived your entire life in complete harmony with the earth. You have everything you could possibly wish for. Suddenly, an enormous hand rips you out of your comfortable place. The betrayal is made even worse by the fact that this same hand is the one that brought you water all through the heat of the summer, that fed you when the soil nutrients were poor.
Once you have been ripped from your home, you are forced to bathe in cold water. Then you are laid, utterly naked, on a sterile white board. You see the flashing of a large gleaming knife as it dismembers you piece by piece, starting at your toes and working its way up your body. Fluids ooze out of you as the pain mounts. The last thing you see is the blade coming down on your head.
This is the sad, short, and painful life of a vegetable in our supposedly health-conscious society. Of course, not all vegetables end up like this. If they�re lucky, they get to decay, forgotten in the bottom of the refrigerator. No one knows when they lose consciousness as the molds slowly infest their chilly bodies, gradually turning them to mush.
Shocked? You should be. Vegetables have feelings too, and yet they are raised in inhumane conditions, forced to live outside in dirt and mud, and, in even the best of “organic” gardens, allowed only manure to eat.
Vegetables are supposed to be “healthy” food, but what kind of health can you get from eating vegetables? Even nutritionists admit that meat is higher in protein and grains are higher in carbohydrates than most vegetables. Supposedly vegetables are valuable for their vitamin content. But any one of us can walk into a grocery store and buy vitamins that are derived from non-vegetable, cruelty-free sources.
End the madness now! Stop eating your vegetable brothers and sisters! Support vegetable rights! (We have animal rights and mineral rights, why neglect vegetable rights?)
yes, i was being sarcastic.
but it’s based on real thoughts. although i can prove them wrong now.
1.vegetables can’t process pain, because they don’t have a brain to do so. they don’t have nerves either.
2.vegetables can’t see a gleaming knife coming at their toes and slowly dismembering them since they don’t have eyes.
3.vegetable rights is real and is complete bull shit.
Sarcasm does not always translate well in print.