Plan Now – Eat Organically Later

Ahhhh, spring is here. The Vernal Equinox (that’s the fancy way
of saying
”
First Day of Spring
”
) arrived on March 20. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time
to dust off your green thumb and think about how your garden
can
”
go organic
”
this year and in future years.
Ahhhh, spring is here. The Vernal Equinox (that’s the fancy way of saying “First Day of Spring”) arrived on March 20. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to dust off your green thumb and think about how your garden can “go organic” this year and in future years.

For me, there are really three keys to successful organic gardening. These are growing the soil, diversifying for beauty, variety and protection and having persistence and understanding.

1. Grow the soil: You would be hard-pressed to find any guide to organic gardening that did not stress the need to “grow the soil.” Simply put, plants grown in a rich, lively, soil will be stronger, healthier, and more productive. While the best thing you can do is have your soil analyzed to see what it needs and then act accordingly, you probably can’t go wrong by doing the following things:

• Avoid turning your soil over too much – particularly when it’s wet. Turning over soil disrupts the natural structure and living systems that the soil has developed.

• Add organic materials like compost and mulch to your soil periodically. Consider a periodic addition of mycorrhizae, a special type of fungus that helps roots tap into water and nutrients, as well.

• Treat your soil like it’s alive … because it is. Soil is full of living organisms – some visible, some not – that together support our plants. Protect it from erosion and depletion as if it were a trusted garden friend.

2. Diversify for beauty, variety and protection: One key attribute that many organic farms have is a diverse group of plants growing. Your home garden can benefit from this treatment as well. Try planting lots of different vegetables in different places. A pest that likes peppers, for example, might find one of your pepper plants in one garden bed, but miss the pepper plant you have on the other side of the yard. In addition, plant flowers in the vegetable garden both to attract beneficial insects (good bugs that eat the bad bugs) and to serve as sacrificial plants. The flowers look great too. A favorite trick in our garden is to plant lots of marigolds on the edge of our beds because earwigs seem to love them and, therefore, leave our vegetable plants alone.

Note: The one cautionary principle to keep in mind here is the desire to place plants with similar water requirements in the same area. If you are growing a pumpkin plant, which wants all the water you can give it in order to produce lots of big pumpkins, near a tomato plant, which needs to be watered judiciously to produce delicious tomatoes, you’re either going to wind up with fewer, smaller pumpkins or watered-down tomatoes. Keep plants like these separate to maximize your returns.

3. Have patience, persistence and understanding: While all gardening is somewhat a labor of love, organic gardening usually requires a bit more labor in return for a lot more love.

• It takes a bit more work to spread compost than it does to water plants with blue chemicals – but the compost lasts longer and produces healthier soil, which will ultimately produce better plants.

• Going out a few nights to catch the slugs and snails before they catch your tender plants is a bit of work – but spreading toxic chemicals in the yard can be toxic to pets and wildlife. Besides, snail hunting can be considered a recreational activity, kind of like hunting deer on a much smaller scale.

• It’s hard to notice that a bad bug has nipped the buds off of a treasured fruit or vegetable – but using pesticides kills the good bugs too, which can actually increase the number of bad bugs. Many organic gardeners plant extra plants knowing that some of them won’t survive their infancy – but enough usually will to make for a successful garden.

Eco-Fact of the Week:  There are in excess of 10,000 insects in a cubic foot of healthy soil.   

Eco-Web Pages of the Week: The granddaddy of all resources on this topic is Organic Gardening magazine. You can find this resource at

www.organicgardening.com/. Lists of plants that attract beneficial insects can be found at www.reneesgarden.com/

hm-gardnr/resource/insect.htm

and at www.farmerfred.com/plants_

that_attract_benefi.html.

Anthony Eulo is a Program Administrator for the City of Morgan Hill who loves his organic garden. He welcomes your questions, comments, and thoughts and can be reached at 779-7247 or

en*****@mo*********.gov.