5 Tips and Tricks to Start Your Own Organic Garden

While you can't rush to an ideal organic garden, you can certainly get a strong foothold. You can start your own organic garden to grow flowers, fruits, or vegetables even if you've never gardened before. Here are some gardening techniques to help you start your own organic garden.

Tips to Start Your Own Organic Garden

Finding the Ideal Location

Garden location, like real estate, is everything. Before allocating all of your time and money to creating a garden, you should ensure that the location you are choosing is suitable for growing vegetables and fruits. 

Most vegetables require a minimum of 8 hours of direct sunlight per day. Even the best gardener's efforts will be thwarted by too much shade. For maximum growth, the plants require maximum photosynthesis.

Take note of how the sun moves across your yard or balcony. The best orientation is south. 

Preparation of Soil

By adding organic matter such as compost and mulches of leaves or straw, even the hardest compacted clay can be transformed into thriving soil. Microorganisms degrade these materials over time, transforming your soil into a lush, rich loam.

Beginning gardeners should always start with a healthy heaping of 2-6" of compost and add 1-2" every season to keep the soil flourishing. Purchase organically approved compost or topsoil of high quality (no nasty chemicals or synthetic fertilizers).

Growing What You Like

Concentrate on foods that you genuinely enjoy so that your time, space, and labor are not wasted. Make a list of your top five favorite vegetables (that can be grown in your area) and try to concentrate on those during your first season. 

Radishes, turnips, lettuce, and zucchini are all very simple to grow. While it is simple to choose a plant, it will be useless if you do not intend to harvest, sell, or eat the plant.

Watering Your Organic Garden

Water, along with sunlight and soil, is one of the most important inputs in a garden. Start your garden near a water source, such as a well or a city water spigot. 

You can water by hand with a garden hose or set up a simple irrigation system using sprinklers, soaker hoses, or drip irrigation. Whatever you decide, make sure you have a reliable source of water that has been evaluated for contaminants. 

Maintain a moist but not soggy garden. If you sow the seeds straight in the garden, you want the soil to be moist but not saturated. Check the weather estimations regularly so that you can water your garden during dry spells. 

Removing Weeds

Toxic herbicides should not be used in your garden. Organic farming necessitates both manual (hand-pulling or hoeing) and preventative weed control methods.

Weeds, unfortunately, grow much faster than vegetable crops, so catching them early is the best way to keep them under control. The "bean thread" stage is the best stage to hoe weeds away because they have only just begun to grow their first true leaves.