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Create Your Own Organic Garden

Owning your own organic garden can provide you many benefits.  An organic garden will not only provide you with great vegetables, it can also help you with your health in the form of exercise due to the physical activity required and also stress relief as it allows you to switch off from your daily routine and relax in the process.  Other than the physical & mental benefits of an organic garden, it can also provide with your very own fresh vegetables.  The organic vegetables you grow will taste much better than the vegetables available at the shops, will be fresher and will provide more nutrition.  To create your own organic garden and grow your own organic vegetables, you will need to:

1.   Remember Location, Location, Location.  The perfect spot for your organic vegetable garden needs to have sun all year round.  If it is however shaded in various times of the day, that should also be fine as long as the organic garden gets some sun light.

2.   Stop applying pesticides and weed killers to the soil in and around your garden.

3.   The tools you require include a shovel, gloves, some wooden stakes, garden twine, a garden hose and a garden fork.

4.   Start small as you don’t need a huge organic vegetable garden to produce a crop.

5.   You will need to remove all debris that is covering the dirt in your organic garden including any rocks. If plants or weeds are already growing, remove them to start fresh.

6.   Use all organic materials you produce around the house, including leaves, dried grass clippings, and any other materials by scattering them over your garden.

7.   Spread a thin layer of organic compost available at your garden centre.  Mushroom compost can also be used.  This will help inoculate your soil with all manner of soil organisms, little bugs, worms and other beneficial life forms that are going to do most of the work for your garden if you give them the chance.  Remember, compost nourishes the microbes, which, in turn, fertilize your plants.

8.   Use the pick or shovel to mix the top 10 centre meters of organic material and soil.

9.   Mulch your garden.  Mulch not only helps to suppress weeds, but also helps conserve water by retaining moisture in the soil. The best mulch to use in an organic garden are grass clippings, straw or leaves. These materials are handy and they break down and feed your plants and soil as they go.

10.       Keep the soil damp but not soggy.

11.       Never walk on your soil and try to utilise a board to avoid compacting the soil. If possible, design the garden in a way where you can reach the centre without needing to step on the soil or create walk ways with planks.

12.       Purchasing vegetables in small pots makes it easier. Simply dig a hole slightly larger than the pot size, remove the plant from the pot, fluff its roots and plant it. Mulch around the plant with additional organic material to keep the soil moist underneath it.

13.       Setup a compost bin in a corner of your garden.  Use it to toss in all the clean organic material that you can get (including vegetable scraps found in the kitchen) and simply follow the compost bin’s instructions. As the compost is created, simply apply the compost periodically to the soil around your plants or use it to grow your own seedlings.

14.       In Summer you can grow your typical organic summer vegetable crop.  In autumn you an utilise your organic garden to grow a winter crop such as lettuce, cabbages, carrots, spinach or cauliflower. You can start the greens by seed or buy small seedling plants from your local garden centre.