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The most basic idea of going green or organic gardening is not using chemical fertilizers or pesticides. While this is correct are many proactive things you can do when you go green. Considering what your gardening is doing to the water supply, people, insects and animals. Some of the insects are good for your garden; they eat slugs and other pests that hurt your plants.

The first thing to do is attend to your soil making sure that you replenish it with organic matter and deplete it as little as possible. You can get the organic matter from your kitchen, grass clippings, straw, roots and stubbles, crop residues, hedge clippings, saw dust, and fall leaves. To make the organic matter suitable for gardening you need to compost it. This is a process of rotting organic matter into a form usable for enriching the soil. The method is to put the organic matter in a heap, a pit or a composter and turn it if in a composter. The heaps shouldn't overheat if made in heaps 1.5 m high and 2.5 m wide and any length will work. These measurements are good for using natural aeration. Larger heaps will need turning. The aeration of larger heaps has to be forced.

The heaps require enough moister and it should take about three to six months for decomposition. The temperature should be medium to high. When the compost is finished making it should be a brown or dark humus material.

You can also use animal manure from rabbits, horses, and cattle. Organic manure greatly improves the soils physical properties like soil porosity, water stable aggregates, water holding capacity, infiltration rate, and hydraulic conductivity. The farm yard manure improves the soils tilth and aeration and stimulates the micro-organisms to activity. The micro-organisms get the soil nutrients ready for the crops.

There are two types of composting: aerobic and anaerobic. The aerobic composting process uses oxygen and this is what you see happening on a forest floor when leaves and other organic matter are decomposing. The anaerobic process hasn't any access to oxygen and is seen at the bottom of marshes where organic mud decomposes. Both processes produce material suitable to enrich the soil, though before becoming humus the material produced anaerobic process will need some aeration, which can take place on the soil and is a minor adjustment.

Some other things that you can do to make your farm green: prevent manure or fertilizer from running off into streams, minimize pesticide, and build a windmill to create energy for your farm. Also, as a farmer this year you can apply for funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Security Program or CPS. This is a new program encouraging farmers to go greento help the environment. A farmer can qualify by showing he's protected the environment in the past and he must minimize the pesticide and keep manure and fertilizer from entering streams. The CPS program started this year.

Learn more about this author, Don Rainwater.
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