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By Melinda
Wouldn't it be great to have a garden that produced all the food your family needs for the entire year? This would be great if we ever have any disasters...including peak oil or climate change impacts on agriculture that limit the production and/or transport of food. I have not figured out how to do this with my limited time as a mom, but I have learned some interesting things that helped my garden to be successful for at least part of the year.
If you are anything like me, you want to just throw some seeds at the ground and have them grow into lovely food producing plants. As a novice gardener, I have learned through many struggles with my garden that in order to get your garden to produce food for your family all year long, you need a very well executed plan. I still have yet to figure out my well executed plan, but I do have some tips to get a garden going for a while.
TIPS for starting an Organic Garden:
1. First, figure out what food producing plants and herbs grow well in your climate and soil. (ex: if you plant tomatoes in a cold climate, they won't produce well unless you have a tomato plant specific to growing well in cold climates.)
2. Use compost, worm castings, and/or manure to feed your soil. You don't need to use the high nitrogen (natural gas based) chemical conventional fertilizers. Feed your soil/plants every 3 months or so.
3. Make sure you put plants in appropriate areas for their needs. (ie: sun, partial sun, or shade)
4. Keep plants watered appropriately or they will not thrive. Most food producing plants need to be watered everyday or every other day. This seems obvious, but when you have kids it is easy to forget to about. I have learned this the hard way.
5. Depending on the pests in your yard, you might need to get out there everyday to pull off or spray off pests with pepper oil or vinegar. At the same time, it is good to get rid of weeds or competing plants that will take over your garden.
TIPS for growing to feed your family:
1. Determine which plant foods your family will eat out of the list of plants that will grow in your climate and soil.
2. Figure out how many seeds or seedlings to plant (take into account approximately 30% destruction from pests). This is also where you will have to determine how much land you need to produce food all year round. You don't necessarily have to have lots of land to do this because there are several methods for growing crops in limited space.
3. This is the more complicated part: Figure out how often to replant seeds or seedlings to start your next crops. You will need to do research to figure out when to plant certain plants, based on how long they take to grow and how often they will produce during the year.
Good luck and Happy Gardening! Feel free to share your organic gardening tips.....
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