by Carol Flett

Created on: September 02, 2010

You have heard about the advantages of organic gardening; you know that it is good for the environment, and you never did like working with all those unhealthy herbicides and pesticides and artificial fertilizers, so, what do you do about it? Do you just throw out the offending chemicals and continue on without them? Or is there more to planting an organic garden than stopping the flow of artificial contaminants?

The term organic garden means much more than just a garden where no chemicals are added. It has more to do with the organic matter that must be present in the soil, and the techniques use in the garden that most closely resemble patterns of nature.

Think of a piece of land with which no man has yet tampered.  Plants have grown and withered and turned back to the soil they came from, leaves have fallen year after year and have been continuously decomposing, carcases of animals and insects are still adding nourishment to the mix. Birds, beneficial insects, and wasps hang around the plants looking for tasty bugs to devour, or nectar to suck, leaving behind their own high nitrogen fertilizer, and plants that like each other crowd together, sharing the rich organic environment they love. This is an organic garden.

Your task will be to look at the pattern provided by nature and try to emulate it. The first, most important task is to prepare the soil. It is highly unlikely that your garden soil has had the benifit of hundreds of years worth of decaying matter, but you can speed up this process either by creating compost in a bin and then adding it to your garden, or by incorporating all the organic matter you can find directly into the soil.

To create compost in a bin or heap, layer high carbon ingredients such as leaves, straw, hay, sawdust or even shredded paper with thinner layers of high nitrogen ingredients such as grass clippings and kitchen peelings. Then add a sifting of soil or old compost if you have some. Continue layering this way until you have at least a three foot heap. Moisten thoroughly and wait until the pile sinks, or until their is less steam escaping from the pile when forked.

At this stage you should loosen the whole thing with a pitchfork to incorporate air and then let it heat up again. Do this about three times and then spread a thick layer onto your garden adding a light sprinkling of wood ashes if you have them and a few handfuls bone meal.

If bin composting is unsuitable, simply dig the same ingredients directly into your

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