Growing Organic Veggies

What do you need to get started growing organic veggies?

• A spade


• A hoe


• A hand trowel


• Some newspaper


• some pesticide/herbicide free grass clippings or leaves from the mulch pile


• 4 stakes


• Some string


• A retractable measuring tape


• Seeds, or plants you started indoors before the last frost, or starter plants purchased from a local organic greenhouse

If you don't have a yard, you can instead grow organic veggies and herbs on your patio or balcony in containers.

Now, about a week or two before your area's growing season is scheduled to start, pick the sunniest spot. Gardens love at least 6 hours of sun a day. Use the stakes and string to stake out a four foot by eight foot plot, which is plenty for your first garden. You can always add more adjacent beds later. Cover the ground you've staked out with the newspaper topped with the grass clippings or old leaves, and wet it all down with your garden hose or a watering can. This can be done directly over any grass that's there! The grass will become your decaying organic matter that will mulch and fertilize your garden. Leaving this all in place until planting time will kill the grass and start that process.

Now, when planting time comes, you simply dig small pits through the leaf and newspaper cover to plant your plants. Don't step into your veggie bed, leave a path around it from which you can work. Leave ample space between your plants, since they'll need some space to grow. Lettuce and chard and other greens need much less space than tomatoes or peppers.

Make sure that in dry times you water your veggie garden, though most times Mother Nature's rain showers will take care of that for you.

Start an organic compost bin and, when the compost is ready for use, give a bit to each plant, carefully distributing it on the ground around the base of your plants.

Plant some yellow, red and orange flowers within sight of, but not adjacent to your veggie garden. Nasturtiums and marigolds are great for this! These act as an attraction for the flying sort of pests that would otherwise love to be munching your organic veggies!