What is Organic Gardening, and Why Should I Do It?
Organic gardening is more than growing a chemical-free tomato for dinner. It's about respecting the earth and all its inhabitants, from homo erectus down to the "lowly" earthworm. Becoming an organic gardener is about becoming a steward of the soil, a partner with all the other creatures who may lay a claim to the dirt you currently call home.
Organic gardening can include diverse things as composting your kitchen waste to improve the soil, creating a backyard habitat for birds and butterflies, and eradicating invasive plant species while increasing the number of beneficial plant and insect species.
Organic gardening is not only a hobby, but is also a responsibility, a joy, and an honor. Please garden responsibly, and take time to enjoy the diversity of life you will undoubtedly encounter.
Great Books for the Organic Gardener
Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up & Maintain a Worm Composting System
Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (A Gardener's Supply Book)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/20/2008)
Gardening for the Future of the Earth
Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)
The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy Methods for Every Gardener
Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 07/20/2008)
Composting
How to Have Fun While Watching Things Rot
How to Set Up Your Composter
- Choose a composter or composting system. You can buy one or build one yourself. Basically, this is just something to contain the stuff that's going to sit around and rot. The most popular is a store-bought one-bin system (also the cheapest). A tumbler is nice though because it speeds things along (although it is more expensive).
- Choose a site for your composter. A sunny spot is ideal because the rotting stuff needs to reach a certain temperature to really get cooking. If your composter is plastic, you may want to put it in a semi-sunny spot, so the stuff doesn't overheat. Also, try to put it somewhere you can get to it easily to load or unload. It also needs to be near a water hose, so you can easily keep it moist. Stay away from large trees, though, because they can suck up the nutrients faster than you can cook them. Some people are so proud of their compost, they make the composter a focal spot in the garden. Other people hide them behind trellises or shrubs.
- Clear a space large enough for the composter. Place straw on the ground to create the bottom of the pile.
- Erect your composter whether it's a plastic store-bought model or a chicken-wire enclosure. Make sure it's sturdy and won't blow away or topple.
- Start to fill with your compostables, wetting things down as you go so the rot can begin. Enjoy!
Maintaining the Composter
- Turn your pile every 7 - 10 days. Use a garden fork, shovel, or compost turner to turn the inside of the pile to the outside and outer parts to the inside.
- Check the moisture of your pile every time you turn it, and hose it down as needed. Your pile should have the consistency of a damp, wrung-out sponge. If it starts to smell like rotten eggs, it's too wet.
- As you add to the pile, keep in mind the rule of "2 parts green, 1 part brown." For every brown item you add (those containing carbon), add 2 parts of green material (those containing nitrogen). Carbon materials include leaves, straw, hay, sawdust, and wood chips. Nitrogen materials include manure, humus, food scraps, grass clippings, and fruit wastes. This ratio keeps the microbes in your pile happy and chowing down.
- Finished compost is dark brown or black, has a crumbly texture, and has a rich earthy smell. You can use it before it completely breaks down, however. Everything will continue decaying in your soil.
- Use the finished compost as mulch (2 - 3 inches is good), as a soil amendment, as a top-dressing for your lawn (1 - 3 inches), or as a compost tea (put 1 shovelful in a 5-gallon bucket of water for a few days, then pour on plants as fertilizer). Only use for houseplants if it's well-rotted (mix 1 part compost to 2 parts potting soil).
Things You Can Toss Into the Composter
- Vegetable scraps.
- Fruit peelings.
- Straw or hay.
- Grass clippings.
- Shredded leaves (avoid poisonous ones as well as walnut, eucalyptus, bay laurel, cypress, juniper, and acacia).
- Eggshells (crushed for faster decomposition).
- Coffee grounds and paper filters.
- Tea leaves or tea bags.
- Stale bread.
- Poop. Get bags of manure (cow, sheep, goat, llama, rabbit, chicken) from your garden center for the cleanest resource. Don't use human, cat, or dog poo (they can contain ugly, germy things that neither you, nor your garden, needs).
- Grains (cooked or uncooked).
Composting Finds
Let It Rot
Price: $12.95
A guide for gardeners to what goes on in the composting process and how to maintain a compost pile. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use o... more »
Envirocycle Composter
Price: $139.99
With the EnviroCycle drum/turning bins compost may be finished in 4 - 6 weeks in a rotating drum composter! Easier to handle and easier to turn the dr... more »
Replacement Charcoal Filters (2) For 235902
Price: $4.99
Each is a heavy countertop container in which you collect kitchen scraps for eventual recycling into fertilizer-rich compost. (Better than choking the... more »
Ceramic Compost Crock
Price: $24.99
Each is a heavy countertop container in which you collect kitchen scraps for eventual recycling into fertilizer-rich compost. (Better than choking the... more »
Stainless Compost Crock
Price: $34.99
Each is a heavy countertop container in which you collect kitchen scraps for eventual recycling into fertilizer-rich compost. (Better than choking the... more »
Organic Gardening Links
- Organic Gardening Magazine
- This is a great magazine, both print and online, that has tons of advice, information, and sources for the organic gardener.
Attract Beneficials to Your Garden
These are the good guys, and they're your best buds in the organic garden!
Attracting beneficials (good bugs, birds, and other critters) is a great way to help your garden. Not only will these guys take care of the uglies (the bad bugs) and help pollinate (think more fruit), but they'll also entertain and beautify.
At the right, a butterfly sips from one of his favorites, the butterfly weed.
Steps for Attracting Beneficials
How to Sound the Alarm for Garden Troops
- First things first: No pesticides!! This cannot be stressed enough. Not only do pesticides (both herbicides and insecticides) kill the bad guys, but they kill the good guys too.
- Grow plants that either are eaten by beneficials or that are used as host plants by their offspring. See the list below if you're not sure what these are.
- Spiders are good guys in the garden. Leave some upturned flower pots among the veggies or whatever you grow to be rezoned for spider condos.
- Put up a bat house. Bats eat mosquitos and other insects as they fly at night.
- Add water. This can be as simple as a birdbath, or as elaborate as a working fishpond, but water will bring all kinds of unsung heroes into your neighborhood.
- Position rocks or other flat objects in the garden so small creatures can sun themselves.
- Dragonflies love a bamboo stick or other object standing out of the soil, so that they can perch there and rest. Just make sure it's not placed somewhere that you could fall on it and skewer yourself (Trust me on this one.).
- A stack of stones will attract toads and lizards. These small guys are bug-eatin' aficionados!
- A good layer of mulch (pine needles or shredded bark) creates a great neighborhood for earthworms and other soil organisms that do lots of work for you (and you didn't even have to ask).
- Create a shallow spot of water for butterflies to sip from, such as the depression in a rock.
- Add a wooden butterfly house next to a butterfly bush or other favorite of theirs. Make sure one of the branches of the bush is sticking into one of the house's entryways.
Plants to Grow for Beneficials' Food & Housing
- Food for snout butterfly young: hackberry leaves.
- Food for monarch butterfly young: milkweed.
- Food for butterfly young, in general: carrot, dill, parsley, nasturtium, and fennel.
- Food for adult butterflies: tithonia, lilac, weigela, witch hazel, zinnia, lantana, globe amaranth, cosmos, butterfly weed, coreopsis, lavender, coneflower, yarrow, New England aster, helianthus, and dwarf marigold.
- Food for bees: sweet clover, fruit trees, gazania, basswood, wild raspberries, and sage.
Go Native
Plants to Avoid
- Purple lythrum (purple loosestrife)
- Water hyacinth (in the South)
This lens supports the ASPCA.
Visit the ASPCA's website to find out how you can help protect animals. Useful Links for the Organic Gardener
- Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms
- This organization pairs up organic farmers with volunteers who want to learn organic growing techniques.
