How to grow organic vegetables

First off, there's no need to lay out your vegetables in rows. From now on you will be planting vegetables and other plants and flowers in patches. More about the flowers later, but for now let's concentrate on the vegetables. Growing vegetables in long rows with evenly spaced gaps in between them wastes a lot of space. This space can be put to a more productive use by growing vegetables in blocks. Potatoes are a great example; traditionally gardeners grow these in rows so that they can be covered with earth as they grow (this is called earthing up). Thing is, these rows are all ready to harvest at the same time but you only need a few at a time. If you leave them in the soil, you miss out on the wonderful taste of the small early potatoes as they have grown quite big by the time you harvest the last. It's much better to plant three tubers close together, then plant another three somewhere else in the garden a couple of weeks later. This gives a continuous supply of new potatoes throughout the year. The same can be done with successional crops like lettuce. Simply sow enough in a patch to last you about two weeks, and then sow another patch somewhere else in the garden about two weeks later. In between all your patches of vegetables, grow flowers, shrubs, roses or whatever decorative plants you like. These will help to camouflage your vegetables from the insect pests and will also attract their natural predators.

• Encourage your allies into your garden and they will take care of the pests for you.


• Build up a diversity of wildlife by growing a wide range of plants in your garden.


• Encourage them by growing French and English Marigolds around your vegetables.


• Ladybirds and Lacewings eat a lot of aphids and will stay in your garden if there are lots of different flowers being grown.


• These insects will also attract the birds and they will certainly clean up the pests for you.


• Leave a few flat stones or slates around to give Ground Beetles a place to hide during the day. They hunt at night and will devour slugs and caterpillars.


• A pond of any size will attract Frogs, just stand back and watch them work for you.

The way to do this is to use natural manures and fertilisers to feed your soil. Unlike sprayed on concentrates that force feed plants and make them grow too fast with lots of soft growth, natural manures and fertilisers release their goodness over a longer period. As they are in the soil, the plant roots get access to them. This way your plants don't get force fed and are shorter, tougher and fitter.
You will need lots of manure, spent mushroom compost or well rotted farmyard manure. If these are hard to come by, then make yourself a compost bin. Making compost is very easy and almost anything will rot down to produce wonderful compost for your garden. Compost can be made from all your weeds and vegetable waste, grass cuttings and fresh vegetable waste from the kitchen. Things to avoid are cooked foods, roots of weeds like docks and ground elder and any diseased plant material.

Are you ready to start your organic vegetable garden. I've been using these methods in my own garden for several years now and I've been enjoying the tastiest vegetables imaginable. There's nothing to beat the taste of vegetables that are picked, cooked and on the table within the hour. If you want to try this method of gardening, and enjoy the rewards, then take a look at Organic Gardening Magic. You won't regret it.