How To Start an Organic Garden: Sun, shade, soil and dung!
Well done! You must have made a good decision, since you are about to read this article; you are about to start an organic garden! Need some advice on how to begin?
Decide what goes where!
First, look at your garden during the day. Where is it sunny? Where are the shady areas that perhaps just get a glimpse of sunlight?
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.
Accordingly: put your vegetables where the sun goes, and your perennials where the shade is, but feel free to mix the suncraving perennials with your veggies to add even more beauty to your garden.
Soil preparation
Next you want to take a look at your garden soil. Is it sandy? Muddy? Dry? Moist? Or different in different parts of the garden?
To prepare a sandy soil in the best manner, you should add organic matter. If you are the lucky owner of a compost pile, you can simply use the degraded material from that. You do know that a compost pile is the backbone of every organic garden, so make sure you have one. However, if by any chance you do not have one at the moment, you have to buy for example cow-dung or the like, which is very good as it will not only bring organic matter to your soil but also a lot of nutrients. Be careful with peat though, as it may make your soil to acidic.
You should continue adding organic matter over the years, to gradually improve your soil.
What if your soil is muddy then? If it’s heavy clay, you’ll probably do well to add some gravel or coarse sand to make it drain better. Beware of fine sand, as it will turn your muddy soil into concrete. And thats not what we are looking for, is it?
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!