Vacations can wreak havoc with a garden, organic or otherwise, if you don’t take a few precautions first. Time your vacation to avoid being away at the height of the harvest; then harvest, water your garden heavily, mulch your plants, and do a thorough job of weeding before you leave. It’s also good to spray your plants with organic pesticides before you go. Do all this, and things won’t get out of hand before you get back. Popularity: 6% [?]
 Photo courtesy of Flickr The New York times ran a detailed article about how the invasive species from South America, the Great Salvinia, is killing off one of the only natural lakes in Texas, Caddo Lake.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Consider experimenting with no-till gardening. Instead of tilling the ground, you can lay down a layer of newspaper, the lay mulch over the top. You can transplant your flowers or veggies directly through the paper, which will eventually rot away anyway. As long as the untilled beds are taken care of, the soil won’t get compacted. Popularity: 16% [?]
Are you looking for a reason to try organic vegetable gardening? Consider this: on a backyard scale, it’s no more difficult or labor intensive than other forms of gardening, and organic products taste better, often because the flesh is firmer, sweeter, more texturally pleasing, and have more antioxidants. They keep better, too. Popularity: 7% [?] If you’re looking for some inexpensive trees to plant, join the National Arbor Day Foundation. You’ll get ten free trees, along with all the benefits of belonging to a national organization dedicated to helping the environment. Popularity: 5% [?] If you’re interested in an intensive, hands-on organic gardening learning experience, check out World-Wide Opportunities for Organic Farming (WWOOF) at http://www.wwoof.org. You can live on an organic farm anywhere in the world, and learn organic techniques firsthand. Popularity: 6% [?]
Here’s a good reason not to use chemical pesticides on your flowers and veggies: while they kill predatory insects, they’ll also poison the beneficial insects, like bees, that pollinate your plants. You may well end up with more seeds and fruit if you avoid using pesticides. For more information on organic pest control, see this page. If you do use pesticides, we recommend our organic and natural pest control products. Many of these only work when sprayed directly onto the insect, so you can be careful what you spray it on and avoid hurting beneficial bugs. Popularity: 6% [?]
While neem oil sounds like something concocted in a laboratory, in fact it’s extracted from the Indian neem tree. This potent-smelling oil works well as an organic insecticide and fungicide, and it’s also finding uses in household soaps as a bactericide. Neem also supposedly has medicinal properties. Popularity: 10% [?]
An effective home-brewed fungicide can be made from three common household ingredients. Add five teaspoons each of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to a gallon of water, and spray it on your plants whenever powdery mildew, downy mildew, rust, and other fungal diseases show up. Don’t want to deal with the hassle? Check out this organic fungicide for roses, or this highly effective, ready to use organic fungicide. Popularity: 11% [?]
If you decide to use chemical fertilizers, go easy on them. Only about 15-25 percent of any fertilizer application (organic or not) is actually used by the plant. The rest evaporates into the atmosphere, or is washed away by runoff and makes its way into the local water supply. Chemical fertilizers can also make your soil too saline after extended use. We offer a large number of terrific organic fertilizers that improve your soil and make your lawn, shrubs, trees and garden happy. Take a look at our selection! Popularity: 13% [?] |
