Organic gardeners are always trying to work in harmony with nature, continually looking to conserve the nutrients in the earth and replenishing those that have been used as our plants grow. In earlier times, all gardening and agriculture was essentially organic as there were no artificial chemical fertilizers easily or widely available. This began to change in the mid 1800’s… Read more »
September is the month to sow green manures. Novice gardeners might think they need to head down to a local farm and kindly ask the farmer if he has fed the cows lately, but this is not exactly what green manures are. Green manures are cover crops that become part of the soil– plants grown off-season and tilled in to… Read more »
As some of you know, my family and I recently moved into a new home, and one of the selling points of the new house is the abundance of fireplaces. There is a lovely large fireplace in our main living space, and a charmingly squat wood-burning stove in the back addition, where my husband and I share a desk, and… Read more »
Dear Top Gardening Friends Although it is likely that if you live in a temperate clime, you will start planting and sowing in the spring, it is not necessarily the only time that you will be planting because depending upon where you live, it is possible to plant two or three crops every year. For example, you might start with… Read more »
Dear Top Gardening Friends For most first-time organic gardeners the key question is, how do you recognize the difference between one soil type and another? The simplest way of testing your soil is by adding a sample to a glass jar of water before allowing it to stand so that all of the materials in the soil sample can settle…. Read more »
Dear Wonderful Top Gardening Friends Mulching is a word that describes the practice of protecting the upper layers of the soil in which you are growing your organic plants with protective materials of some description or another. Mulching serves many purposes, it can for example protect your plant roots against the worst effects of chillier nights, whilst in hotter climates,… Read more »
To ensure your organic gardening is successful, you need to fertilise your garden and that doing so using organic fertilizer is at the heart of the organic gardening concept. The easiest and most effective way of making your own organic fertilizer is to have your own compost heap, so how can you make an effective compost heap. So, how… Read more »
If you are at least a teeny bit interested in organic food, you will probably be already aware of the vast array of benefits that eating organic offers. But with so much information and opinions available, it could get overwhelming. At least, it seems everybody now agrees that sedentary lifestyle, which many people in Western countries lead, coupled with poor… Read more »