There is Nothing Greener than Organic Gardening!

Delicious, Homegrown, Chemical Free Vegetables...in Your Backyard!

If you've never tasted a fresh, ripe tomato straight from the garden, you are missing out! Gardening can be a lot of work, but it is worth it. Knowing where your food comes from and what sort of work went into it, teaches respect for the earth (not to mention being rewarding). No one will argue gardening the responsible, natural, healthy way is indeed green! You'll also save money.

No thanks...I'll get my veggies at the grocery store.

Gardening is not hard!

Having a green thumb is not as difficult as you might think it is. Humans have been growing vegetables for thousands of years. Most of them with far less education than you have probably received. Only in recent years have they had the resources of the internet (and Squidoo) to help them out! You can do it, I promise.

There are many ways to garden organically.

We like square foot gardening.

Square foot gardening is a method that involves building beds out of wood, rocks, etc and filling them with deep, rich materials. Organic compost, vermiculite or perlite (for drainage) and peat moss are your basic ingredients. This creates rich, nutrient filled soil with excellent drainage and water holding capacity.

To get plenty of free fertilizer, consider keeping chickens! Vist our website and our lens on raising chickens.

The square foot part refers to how the garden is organized. Each vegetable requires a certain amount of space to grow (with sq ft gardening it is less space than will be printed on your seed packet). The vegetables are planted in each square foot according to their alloted space. [For example: A broccoli plant needs the whole foot, so you plant it in the center. A green onion plant is small and harvested young, 16 will fit in a square so you plant 4 across and 4 down in a grid pattern.]

Typically square foot gardens are a 4x4 foot square. We like a lot of tall growing veggies that grow best trellised, so we have 2x7 foot beds with a trellis across the back. You don't have to follow the rules, adapt them to what best fits your needs.

Deep root growth is encouraged by the soil mix, allowing for closer planting. The close planting helps shade out weeds and conserves water. Having a raised bed helps the gardener's back.

To learn more about square foot gardening, visit the links below. To learn more about organic gardening scroll down to our next section!

Raise Chickens!

Chickens are a green gardeners best friend! Free fertilizer, pest control, and fresh eggs as an added bonus.

Green Eggs & Chickens: How Raising Chickens can Help Save the Planet!

No, my eggs and my chickens aren't actually green. The eggs are brown and the chickens are black (but they do have a green sheen in the sun). We mean "green" in terms of earth friendly. If you want to know: *How chickens can be earth friendly, *Why...

Gardening Links

The Original Square Foot Gardening Home Page: How would you like a garden filled with beautiful flowers, fresh herbs and luscious vegetables, but NO WEEDS and NO HARD WORK?
Square Foot Gardening Plant Spacings: A nice grid of plant spacings for Square Foot Gardening.
Another Squarefoot Gardening Page: This page has nice photos of trellised Square Foot Gardens.
Raised Garden Beds: How to build and install your own raised garden beds, buy ready-made raised beds, or buy click-together raised bed components.

No chemical pesticides PLEASE!

"Give me spots on my apples, leave me the birds and the bees."

Maybe we can have the best of both worlds, no spots and the birds and the bees. Nature is a delicate balance that keeps itself in check. When we don't add chemicals, non-native insects, animals or plants, nature has an easier job taking care of itself. You can help with that balance in your garden using companion planting, natural pest deterents and plants that attract beneficial insects.

Companion Planting

Planting compatible vegetables helps prevent disease and infestation. It can also improve the productivity and flavor!

Plant some basil near a tomato plant. It will impove the flavor, and make grabbing the ingredients for your spaghetti sauce even easier! Basil is also said to repel flies. Plant some peas near your corn and the corn will get the extra nitrogen it needs. Garlic and hot peppers can help prevent disease and are ingredients in our non-toxic pest deterent spray (below). For more information on companion planting, check out the links below.

Natural Pest Deterents

Many non-toxic natural substances and plants can help keep nasty bugs away from your garden. In turn many of these plants attract beneficial insects that are natural predators to the bad ones. Peppermint, nausturtium, garlic all scare away the bad bugs. Alfalfa adds nutrients to the soil, is very easy to grow and attracts lots of bugs hungry to eat the bugs that eat YOUR veggies.

To get free bug extermination, consider keeping chickens! Vist our website and our lens on raising chickens.

Our Bug Repelling Chemical Free Highly Effective Garden Protecting Spray!

Bugs don't like mint, garlic, onions or hot peppers. Soap, just regular dish soap, kills a lot of them. These are the basic ingredients to our bug spray. DON'T spray it in your house, because YOU won't like how it smells either. Ingredients are approximate, so you get the idea, but use what you've got handy.

Peppermint leaves/Peppermint oil/Peppermint extract
Hot Peppers/Hot Sauce
Garlic
Onion
Dish soap (food safe, no bleach or anything like that)
Water, just plain water

Take several peppermint leaves, a couple drops of oil or a spoonful of extract, several cloves of garlic, a few slices of onion, a spoonful of hot sauce or a hot pepper, and a couple spoonfuls of soap, mix with a little water in a blender. Add the mixture to make about a quart or so to some more water. Let it sit for a day or two, strain it and put it in a clean spray bottle. Spray all over your plants. Repeat when it rains.

Companion Planting & Organic Insect Control

Garden Insectary: A garden 'mini' insectary is a small garden plot of flowering plants designed to attract beneficial insects.
Companion Planting: Organic Companion Planting
Organic Pest Control: Great site for organic pest control.

Waterering & Weeding

Square foot gardening helps cut down on the unpleasant chores of gardening. You water only the plants that you are trying to grow (not the weeds). I use a drip irrigation system on a timer and I never have to think about watering the garden. Organic gardening wastes less water also.

As for weeding...I don't. Not much anyway. Square foot gardening helps shade out the weeds and watering only the intended plants doesn't allow the weeds to grow. I like to take it one step further and mulch. Cover the ground with woodshavings, disease free leaves, or even black plastic and the weed seeds will get no light.

More Help for a Sustainable Lifestyle

Your Coffee Needs to Get a Little Greener!

Coffee is the most heavily chemically treated food on the planet. Give that a moment to sink in. Yes, that morning cup of coffee may be the most environmentally unfriendly and sociologically irresponsible thing you do all day. Not to mention the fact...

Why I am Anti-Antibacterial Soaps (and you should be too)

Yet studies show that there isn't any evidence that any of these products keep us healthier. Triclosan and triclocarban are the typical additives. Why are they bad? In a word - Superbugs.

Green and Great Cleaning Products: Make Your Own or Buy Them

Many of us grew up thinking that Bleach = Clean. This is not true, really Bleach = Dioxin = Cancer. Not to mention other harmful chemicals, lung irritating fumes, the potential to create deadly gas when mixed and the chance of accidental ingestion by...

Green Eggs & Chickens: How Raising Chickens can Help Save the Planet!

No, my eggs and my chickens aren't actually green. The eggs are brown and the chickens are black (but they do have a green sheen in the sun). We mean "green" in terms of earth friendly. If you want to know: *How chickens can be earth friendly, *Why...

Raising Baby Chicks

So you've already read my lens on why you should raise chickens (No? Click here), and now you want to know how? You've come to the right place. Learn how to protect them, what to feed them & more. Even if you don't think chickens are for you, stay f...