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Gardening the Organic Way

By: Karen Connell

Read More About Cultivation & gardening

Organic gardening is becoming very popular with gardeners today. The only real difference between regular gardening and organic gardening is that organic gardeners don't use any chemicals in their fertilizers, pesticides or any of the other things that they apply to the soil or plants to help them grow.

Organic gardening is certainly more labor intensive than regular gardening but, when growing vegetables for the table, the resulting dishes are much tastier, not to mention healthier.

The biggest job for organic gardeners is the regular addition of organic fertilizers to improve the soil. The use of horse manure is a popular choice for this purpose. Another choice is the contents of the compost heap. A good compost heap is an organic gardener's friend but, unless you can get your waste from other sources, a normal household compost heap would probably not yield sufficient material for the serious organic vegetable grower.

The organic gardener is constantly at war with the insects that destroy the plants. Traditional gardening has a simple but effective solution - the pesticide. But, for the serious organic gardener, this is not an option. An organic gardener would use tactics like trying to attract the insect eating species to their garden such as frogs, lizards and birds. To deter slugs and crawling pests; some good mulch could help or even some washed eggshells around the base of the affected plants.

Another tactic employed by organic gardeners is to plant companion plants. This is where you would plant certain plants together to keep pests away. For instance, you could plant chervil or garlic next to lettuce to keep away the aphids, or plant dill to attract aphid eating insects. Asparagus would help to keep the destructive insects away from tomatoes. Another plant to consider for keeping your tomatoes insect free is French marigolds; they give off a strong smell which repels both greenfly and blackfly. Nasturtiums planted around cabbages provide caterpillars with a more enjoyable snack and they would generally leave the cabbages alone. When employing this tactic in your garden or vegetable plot, be sure to plant the companion plants at the same time so that the pests don't get a chance to become established.

Keeping your plants weed free is another time consuming task. You could use a mulch to minimize the amount of weeds that will flourish in the organic garden or you could go down the old fashioned route of regular weeding and hoeing to prevent weeds from growing and spreading. Weeding is a thankless and never ending but very necessary job in the organic garden but regular weeding will ensure that your organic plants and vegetables have the best possible environment for maximum growth.

Before planting your organic garden, search for the strongest plants, they will be more resistant to disease and pest infestation. Each year try and rotate the vegetable and flower beds. This will help to prevent the spread of disease in the soil.

So, as you probably already know, organic gardening is not for the work shy gardener but the results will make all the effort worthwhile.

There is a great way to earn some extra cash from your organic gardening efforts. Grow a little more that you need or when you are thinning out your seedlings, put them into small pots, grow them on and then you can sell them to raise extra cash.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

If you are only just beginning with organic gardening, have a look at Gardening For Beginners. This will give you all the details you will need to make extra cash from your garden.

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