Grow Salads, Herbs and Flowers for Your Health

Why grow organically?

It's really easy. It's environmentally friendly.. and it's really quite good fun! It's also great exercise.

How to begin?

Any scrap of land can be used as long as it has soil and you can clear a space. Don't use land which might be contaminated with industrial pollutants.

You can also do amazing things with a few containers or tubs. Some vegetables can grow quite well in the confined space of a planter or a window box. Lots of the common culinary herbs such as chives, mint, thyme and basil do quite well in containers or planters.

Companion plants such as marigolds and sunflowers are very easy to grow, too. They will help to attract beneficial insects such as hoverflies and bees.

To clear your patch, get a garden fork and give the soil a dig. Loosen up and remove all the weeds. This is the hard work part. Alternatively, you could just scrape the weeds away and sow your seeds without disturbing the soil. Many organic gardeners swear by this method. A hoe or a spade is good for this.

If you are new to this kind of exercise warm up your muscles first with a brisk walk or other exercise. You can quite easily strain your back when digging, especially if you are not used to it, so it pays to limber up first.

Put your weeds somewhere out of the way to compost. They will provide good soil nutrition in months to come. Pile them up into a heap where they can slowly rot down. A waterproof cover will help but is not really necessary. I turn some of mine into green banks which are good for wildlife. You can always use the soil later if it is needed elsewhere. I even had a partridge nesting in one of these green banks one year!

Give the ground a raking before you sow your seeds, if possible and clear away any large stones.

Let the ground settle for a few days and buy some seeds. Good things to try to start are salad crops such as lettuce, mizuna, radishes and spring onions. Read the packs before you buy as sowing and growing times vary quite a lot.

Follow the instructions on the packet and you are away. Most seeds are fairly undemanding, provided that the soil is warm enough. Around 7 degrees Celsius and up, is a good starting point for many salad vegetables. If you want to check you can buy a soil thermometer. Otherwise, wait until the air temperature has been above 7 degrees for a week or two fairly consistently.

Don't worry about manure or other sources of fertility to begin with. Most soil will be rich enough to grow crops in the first year without any additional nutrients.

It pays to weed your crop and check it often in the early weeks as small seedlings can easily be throttled by bossy, competitive weeds.

If you have a little success with sowing and growing simple vegetables and herbs you will be providing yourself with delicious and nutritious food. Your vegetables should be chock full of vitamins and minerals and far tastier than most of the fare on offer in your local supermarket. You can ensure that they are really fresh by picking them just when you want them.

And your veg will have traveled precisely zero food miles!