How To Start an Organic Garden: Plan and prepare!

You need to get to know your garden and how the sun shines upon it. Perhaps some spots get sun most of the day, while others are mostly in the shadow?

If you plan to grow organic vegetables, choose the sunny patches for them. Most vegetables need a lot of sun to grow well, whilst you can find many perennial flowers that grow well in the shady areas of the garden.

Accordingly: put your vegetables where the sun goes, and your perennials where the shade is, but feel free to mix the suncraving perennials with your veggies to add even more beauty to your garden.

Keep reading, there is more info on how to start an organic garden!

Next you want to take a look at your garden soil. Is it sandy? Muddy? Dry? Moist? Or different in different parts of the garden?

To prepare a sandy soil in the best manner, you should add organic matter. If you are the lucky owner of a compost pile, you can simply use the degraded material from that.

You do know that a compost pile is the backbone of every organic garden, so make sure you have one. However, if by any chance you do not have one at the moment, you have to buy for example cow-dung or the like, which is very good as it will not only bring organic matter to your soil but also a lot of nutrients. Be careful with peat though, as it may make your soil to acidic.

You should continue adding organic matter over the years, to gradually improve your soil.

What if your soil is muddy then? If it's heavy clay, you'll probably do well to add some gravel or coarse sand to make it drain better. Beware of fine sand, as it will turn your muddy soil into concrete. And thats not what we are looking for, is it?

You know earth worms are a gardener's best friends, right? To make them happy, add loads of organic matter to your muddy soil as well.

Now we are almost finished with the basic steps on how to start an organic garden!

Dig your soil two shovels deep. Preferably, avoid rototilling as it tears apart the roots of the weeds, spreading them even more, as well as tearing apart the earth
worms, ouch!

Finally, you can start to rake and the sow whatever it is your heart desires (and will go well in your region). To stop any problems almost before they arise, visit your
garden every day and look for bugs and other disturbances. Get to know your garden and that will make it so much easier for you to take good care of it.

And remember to enjoy your garden as well as work in it. Or are these two the same?