Growing your own organic vegetables does not have to be an overwhelming process.
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Growing food organically is a big part of green living. You are cutting back on the distance that your food needs to travel to get to you, the quantity of pesticides that get into the water and air, and even the amount of grass that needs mowing. A few easy gardening practices will help you on your path to enjoying homegrown food and reducing your carbon footprint.
Compost
Start a compost pile; it is one of the best things you can do for your garden. Compost improves the fertility of your soil, helps it retain moisture, and can suppress plant diseases. You can start a pile in a shady, well-drained spot in your yard. Alternate layers of kitchen scraps such as coffee grounds and produce waste with yard waste such as leaves, wood chips, and straw in a roughly 2-to-1 ratio. Add a thin layer of soil to get the process started. Keep the pile moist.
Raised Beds
Create raised beds in your garden by mounding the soil up or by building frames from scrap materials (stones, untreated lumber, or cement blocks, for example) and filling the center area with soil. Make the beds no wider than 3 feet; otherwise, they're too hard to reach across. Raised beds warm up faster in the spring, so you can plant earlier. They allow for intensive gardening with plants spaced so close together that the leaves of fully grown plants touch. Paths between beds are clearly defined, which means the soil in the beds isn't compacted by foot traffic.
Mulch
Tuck a thick layer of mulch around all of your plants (and any exposed soil) to control weeds and retain moisture. Free mulch is often available, most commonly in the form of leaves, wood chips, and grass clippings. Just be sure the mulch you use is weed-free. At the end of the growing season, you can leave it in your garden; some of it will decompose into your soil over the winter, and what's left in the spring can be reused.
Crop Rotation
Rotate plantings so that any given crop is planted in a different spot in next year's garden. This takes some careful note-keeping, but in his book "The New Organic Gardener," Eliot Coleman makes the case that crop rotation is one of the most important organic gardening practices. Rotation makes more nutrients available to the plants, improves soil structure, and improves yields. Some beneficial rotations include following a planting of sweet corn with a planting of potatoes, following cabbage with sweet corn, following peas with cabbage, following beans with tomatoes and following root crops with beans.
Suzanna Didier's work appears in various online publications, including the National Geographic website and Local.com. She lives on a hobby farm, direct-markets her organic produce to local restaurants and has taught at the preschool, elementary and college levels. Didier holds a Master of Arts in education from the University of Oregon.
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