How To Start an Organic Garden: Sun, shade, soil and dung!

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How To Start an Organic Garden: Sun, shade, soil and dung!

Good for you! Most likely you have recently made a decision to start an organic garden, great choice! Read this and you will know where to begin.

Make a plan!

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?

Many perennial flowers develop well in the shady parts of the garden, or actually prefer them, whereas most vegetables need lots of sunshine to grow really well and mature properly.

So put your veggies in the sun (but dont hesitate to grow sun craving flowers amongst your veggies, they go well together), and place flowers in the shade.

Prepare your soil

Now you need to turn your eyes to the ground, and even further down into your garden soil. Does it consist mainly of clay, or is sand the dominant component? Does this apply to all of your garden, or does it vary?

If your garden soil is mostly sandy, you need to add organic matter to it. Perhaps you have a compost pile in your organic garden? Then you can use the material from that. If you dont (start one immediately, every organic garden needs compost), you can buy your organic matter. Peat, cow-dung (which also brings nutrients to your soil) and bark all work fine, but dont put to much peat in cause that will make your soil acidic.

If you want to make your soil better by the years, continue to add organic matter each year.

Muddy soil usually drains poorly. To improve the drainage, add som gravel or coarse sand, but stay clear of fine sand unless you want your muddy soil to turn into concrete. Rest assured, your veggies will not grow well in that...

And then, do just the same as with the sandy soil: add lots and lots of organic matter, to make your soil porous and make the earth worms happy.

It is tempting to use a rototiller since it is fast and seemingly efficient. However, it will spread some of the weeds by shredding the roots into pieces that will turn into more plants, huh. The earth worms will also thank you if you instead take the old shovel and simply dig two shovels deep.

Rake, sow, water and wait. And remember, take a stroll in your garden every day, pick a weed here, squash a bug there. Get to know your garden!

Article Source: GardenGap.com

About the Author

I sincerely hope that you now have an idea on how to take your first steps when you start an organic garden! Got to find out the rest? Look for the info at http://organicgardentips.org, you won't regret it!

Html View | by: Amelia Lathyrus Total views: 2 Word Count: 437 Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009

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