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Posts Tagged ‘gardening’

A Small Kitchen Garden Can Improve Your Finances
By Daniel Gasteiger

A few weeks ago I noticed something at the local grocery store that you can probably find where you shop: higher prices. From my shopping trip one week to my trip the next week, prices on dozens of items increased 20 cents. Among the most astonishingly high prices: produce. It kills me, for example, so see red peppers at $2.99 per pound. That translates to about $1.50 for a single pepper.

I have a hedge against these rising prices: I grow a lot of my own produce. You can grow your own as well, and discover a hobby that can quite possibly reduce your grocery bills by hundreds of dollars a year.

Beat Grocery Store Prices: Basil

For the sake of comparison, a package of fresh basil-that’s a clump of whole plants wrapped in plastic and ready for use-costs about $2.69 in a grocery store. You can buy a package of basil seeds for about $1.59, and a bag of potting soil for $2 or less (off-season, I bought bags of soil for 75 cents apiece). Plant just a few seeds in an empty yogurt container, and you’ll match the grocery store basil in six to eight weeks. (A pack of grocery store basil contains about a dozen plants growing in a 2-in cube of potting soil).

If you plant a yogurt container every two weeks, you’ll have ten or twelve going from one package of seeds, that’s plenty to season many meals, and maybe even make some pesto sauce.

Grocery store basil: $27 for 10 meals. Home-grown from seeds: $3.59 for a year’s supply.

What do you pay for tomatoes?

When on sale, tomatoes in our local grocery store cost $1.99 per pound. Since an average-sized grocery store tomato weighs half a pound, I’d pay one dollar per tomato when they’re on sale. A flat of young tomato plants (six plants that are already growing and ready to transplant into a garden or flower pot) costs around $3 at the beginning of the growing season. Transplant just one of those plants and raise it to maturity and it can produce from 25 to 100 pounds of tomatoes (depends on length of growing season, size of variety of tomatoes grown, amount of water applied, and diligence).

If you have space in your yard for a tomato plant, pessimistically you can harvest $25 worth of tomatoes from that plant. If you grow all six plants from a flat, you could harvest, perhaps, 200 pounds of tomatoes worth $100. Some tomato varieties might produce 100 pounds of tomatoes per plant, so six plants would provide a crop worth $300.

But here’s a sad truth about grocery store produce: Your chances of buying a good tomato in a grocery store are close to zero. Sure, you can buy very nice grocery store tomatoes, but these are distant cousins of good tomatoes. The worst ripe tomato you grow in a home kitchen garden is dramatically juicier, sweeter, tastier, and all-around more enjoyable than the very best grocery store tomato.

Grocery store tomatoes: $60 for 10 weekly tomato salads. Home-grown tomatoes: $3 for a flat of plants.

Start Your Own Home Kitchen Garden

Basil and tomatoes provide an inkling of the savings you can realize by growing your own produce. If you have enough space, you can grow dozens of varieties of vegetables and fruit at similar savings over grocery store prices. In many cases, the things you grow taste dramatically better than what you buy in a store.

Even if you have little space, you can grow some produce at home. One great way to get started is to find and visit with an experienced gardener. Help out, if they’ll allow it, and take what you learn back to your own gardening projects.

If you can’t find someone to work with, buy a good book about how to create and manage a home kitchen garden. There are many good titles–even some focused specifically on your region (methods vary considerably depending on climate). Also, peruse web sites that teach gardening. There are thousands of blogs about gardening, and even whole communities of “garden-bloggers.” One good starting place is This Garden Is Illegal which has an enormous amount of useful information and lists hundreds of gardening blogs to explore. When you find a kitchen gardening site you like, don’t just read what’s already there, ask questions. Most gardening web sites’ owners are happy to help with your gardening problems.

Daniel Gasteiger, the original CitySlipper, blogs to help people grow produce at home. His web site, Home Kitchen Garden teaches about all facets of growing things to eat in your own space. His other web site, Small Kitchen Garden explores vegetable and fruit gardening for people with limited space.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Gasteiger
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Small-Kitchen-Garden-Can-Improve-Your-Finances&id=1693831

Gardener, What of Your Compost Heap?
By Trevor Dalley

To the making of composts there is no end.

Where it is possible to make compost, this is the best material of all for the gardener to use. All kinds of green material and garden waste can be incorporated in the heap including annual weeds. Grass Mowings, Hedge Trimmings, Pea, tomato and Bean haulm, old flower stems and so on.

If a proportion of manure can be obtained, this also should be included in the heap, though it is not absolutely essential. Poultry manure, if included, should not exceed 20 per cent in bulk and should be applied in layers not more than an inch thick. A thick layer of poultry manure will prevent air from circulating and retard the break-down of the heap. It is often possible to obtain industrial or semi-industrial organic waste (waste from eating establishments and hotels) that, if incorporated in reasonable proportions, can be of great value.

Seaweed is probably the most valuable of all, and other materials which I have used include water-weed from rivers and canals, decayed sawdust from the old sawmills and waste coffee, cocoa residues from various industrial processes, also we have used hemp not the type that some people smoke, (if you tried to smoke this type you would have to roll a joint the size of a telegraph pole to get any sort of buzz) we only use the type for making rope.

Fresh fallen leaves have a delaying effect on the break-down of the heap and it is better, therefore, to allow them to rot by themselves for a year or two and then to incorporate them in the compost heap.
I find that the Garden Compost Heap should not exceed four feet square and about three feet high, but they can be made of any desired size.

If the Compost Heap is made to wide or to high, there will be a lack of air and the majority of the necessary bacteria will not multiply. The Garden Compost Heap should be built on soil rather than on a concrete base or on gravel. If it is built on grassland, it is better to dig out the top 4 inches of the grass. In any case, there should be a loose layer of hard, woody material to assist aeration.

Baled Straw is the best material to use for the walls; it provides a neat, convenient method of making the heap and enables the compost to decompose fully right up to the walls and assists the retention of the heat of decomposition. After the bales have been used two or three times and have started to disintegrate, the Straw Bale can itself be incorporated in the next heap. Many Garden Compost Heaps, however, are made without any retaining walls at all.

Quicker results and more even decomposition will be obtained if the raw materials are mixed and shredded before being put on to the heap and there are several shredding machines on the market which are very efficient. Where no shredder is available, dry materials should be mixed with fresh green matter in alternate layers. Straw Bales of any description should be thoroughly wetted. The layers should not exceed 6 inches in thickness and should be a good deal less in the case of Grass Mowings and any other material that will form a mass which the air cannot penetrate.

A light sprinkling of topsoil or good de-composted compost should be added at every twelve inches of height to introduce bacteria into the heap. A sprinkling of lime dust in the form of crushed chalk at a rate of one ounce to every two square yards may also be added along with the topsoil.

Layers of Well Rotted Farmyard Manure in the Garden Compost Heap will act as an activator, but whether there is Manure in the heap or not, I always use an activator usually herbal based as I find this speeds up decomposition.
The final covering of the Garden Compost Heap can either be an inch or two of topsoil or a rough thatch of straw, slopped to carry off the rain. In large Garden Compost Heaps, vertical air holes are necessary. They should be spaced at 3 feet intervals down the centre of the Garden Compost Heap.

If the heap seems to be drying out, the outside should be wetted. Try to wet evenly and avoid saturation. There may be a certain amount of leaching from the bottom of the Garden Compost Heap if no retaining wall is used. In such a case it is well to spread a thin layer of sawdust, peat or other absorbent organic matter round the base of the Garden Compost Heap. This material can be incorporated into the next Garden Compost Heap that is made and will add to the value of the finished compost.

The process of decomposition will be greatly accelerated by turning the Garden Compost Heap once every 3 to 4 weeks after building. If so desired the Garden Compost Heap can be treated again with an activator during the turning process but this is not essential. Garden Compost Heaps made chiefly of fresh green material will often break down quite successfully without any turning at all but where the material is very dry and made from straw one turn is practically essential.

It is most important that the high temperature at the centre of the Garden Compost Heap should be obtained, otherwise annual weed seeds may survive and be reintroduced all over the garden. It is advisable to purchase a soil thermometer and make sure that the Garden Compost Heap reaches a temperature of no less than 40 degrees Celsius. If the Garden Compost Heap does not heat up, the reason is probably that it has been built to slowly.

The remedy is to turn it and add fresh green material; also adding chicken dung pellets will help. There is no objection to incorporating diseased vegetable matter in the well-made Garden Compost Heap that heats up properly. In fact, there is considerable evidence to prove that such a Garden Compost Heap becomes a breeding-ground for bacteria that will fight the disease, and that the resulting Garden Compost Heap, when applied to the soil, will give resistance to, if not immunity from, the disease concerned.

This seems to be particularly true in the case of Tomatoes, and many gardeners insist that the compost that they use for their Tomato crops should contain as large a proportion as possible of old Tomato haulm.
Garden Compost-Making is an art that has to be acquired. It is, however, not a difficult art and any Gardener with a reasonable amount of common sense can quickly learn it.

It is also, quite frankly, something which we know more about now than lets say 100 years ago mainly because of the advancements in modern scientific research. What I do think is that some gardeners make much to heavy weather of Garden Compost-Making. It need not be anything like the laborious a job as many people think, providing the Garden Compost Heap is sited in the right place as to avoid unnecessary transport of materials.

Trevor Dalley has been growing and preserving his own fruit for 40 year, most of the preserves are sold in his Organic Farm Shops in Herefordshire England. Did you find those tips on Organic Food a way of Life useful?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Trevor_Dalley
http://EzineArticles.com/?Gardener,-What-of-Your-Compost-Heap?&id=1718320

Soil-Less Indoor Gardening – Provide the Easy Life For Your Plants
By Carm Paynter

There are a variety of benefits associated with soil less or hydroponic gardening. This is the easy life for your plants. The plants roots don’t have to search for food and water like they do in soil. The food and water is brought directly to them, all they have to do is grow and enjoy the easy life.

There are no insects to eat the leaves and roots, no diseases to leave large gaping holes in the leaves making it hard to manufacture the required food to keep them growing.

For providing all these plant comforts what are the rewards? There are actually several major benefits. The most noticeable is the rate of growth, that can be 30%-50% faster. There isn’t any reason to use pesticides so we don’t have to worry about the pesticides that were used just as a preventative measure to produce our food. The plants are usually quite a bit larger, the flavors are usually enhanced, the garden can be grown indoors, the produce can be grown year round. Hydroponics enables plants to be grown closer together which helps increase the overall yield of crops. Not only that, but also several crops can be grown in the same hydroponic growth tank.

We can get this same response from annual flowers, fruit, herbs, and vegetables in a hydroponics system.

Hydroponics has always been an ecologically sound gardening choice. It uses much less water than conventional gardening and does not erode the soil or add toxins to the environment. Soluble nutrient formulas are re-circulated and used by the plants’ roots, which helps eliminate this environmental waste that we have to deal with every day.

As many gardeners today are choosing to grow crops, especially food crops organically, organic crop cultivation in hydroponics has become very popular. Organic gardening is the cultivation of plants without the use of synthetic chemicals or pesticides. This ensures that no harmful pesticides or fungicides will be used in our food production. For this we are willing to invest in the extras that are required by organic gardening. There are many organic nutrients and additives designed specifically for use in hydroponic gardens.

In order to know what to expect when attempting your own hydroponic garden you have to know what a hydroponic garden is. Once you understand what this type of gardening entails, you will be more aware of what to expect when constructing a garden of this nature for yourself.

The big advantage for small-scale hydroponic gardeners is the opportunity to grow plants year-round. This can be accomplished by the use of indoor lighting. The correct type of lighting that you would need for growing plants indoors using the hydroponic method would be a High Intensity Discharge (H.I.D.) light. These types of lights are designed to give off the correct spectrum of light waves, which are perfect for growing plants indoors-and in water no less. There has been some research using LED’s. This will reduce the electrical costs of lighting your hydroponic garden.

This is a relatively new concept in indoor gardening but there is lots of good information available and you can access this Hydroponic Gardening information anytime you want.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carm_Paynter
http://EzineArticles.com/?Soil-Less-Indoor-Gardening—Provide-the-Easy-Life-For-Your-Plants&id=1720864

Economic Gardening – Value Your Money
By Ilango Chokalingam

Gardening is considered a hobby for most of us. Planting seeds and growing them is a way to calm you from the pressure and tension of the environment around us.

Keeping a good garden ensures a fresh mind and a happy living. Time has its own value and just for the sake of relaxation, gardening is not entertained in the recent trend.

That is why the concept of this economic gardening came into existence.

It is a method by which economically valuable plants are grown with the space available and make the most out of them. In simpler terms, it is a hobby for those who want it as a hobby and a money yielding business for those who really want to make a living out of it.

To make this type of gardening successful, adequate planning is needed. The interrelationships of plants and their co-existence, shade tolerance, growth conditions, seasons are also considered.
Here are few methods to help have a happy garden.

The Raised Bed

By growing plants in an environment suitable for them to grow and then transplanting them to the field is the best practice that yields the maximum result. This type is usually followed in farming. Nevertheless, it can be used in gardening. Choosing the right plant, for example the onions and tomatoes, they may grow differently. Onion may require stagnant water while tomatoes may need water but not stagnant. Growing them together will degrade the output. Therefore, taking them to grow on beds, which are boxes filled with fertile sand and seeds are planted and grown well. Seeds can be purchased for few dollars but the output is so good that you have the vegetables home before anyone else have them. As the plant saplings reach a height of 10 to 12 inches, they are ready to face the gardening atmosphere. Now transferring them onto fields or green houses will ensure the result is extremely high.

Vertical Gardening

This method is highly successful for smaller gardening space. This involves the use of cages, nets or strings. Some plants like cucumber, tomatoes entwine themselves onto some support to grow. So, using a vertical stick or a cage and planting these plants will make them grow on to the support in a vertical fashion. These may even look prettier to keep as house decorative items. Also they consume lesser space and take less time to maintain.

Interplanting

Planting several types of crops together is interplanting. For example, onions and pepper can be planting together with no diminishing results. In addition, radishes and carrots are planted together. Before carrots mature, radishes can be harvested. This interplanting is usually done by placing alternate rows of plants. Plants like legumes, beans, restore the nutrients to the soil they grow. So plants with high nutrient needs can be grown together with these, preserving the soil fertility as well as saving your money.

Gardening is a way of developing ourselves patience. It calms the mind, brings fresh air and makes body more flexible. By choosing economically valuable crops and growing them, it even makes gardening better way of living. If it is properly done, excessive amount of harvest can yield a subsidiary income to the family. Happy family is all we want. Let the happiness begin from our garden.

With the arrival of spring and summer, many people are ready to shed the winter blues and start planning their garden.

For many this will mean a trip to the local nursery to buy the needed plants. Others will be planting their seeds and growing their own plants.

Visit http://gardening.bignewspool.com for detailed instructions how to plan your garden and much more Information about gardening.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ilango_Chokalingam
http://EzineArticles.com/?Economic-Gardening—Value-Your-Money&id=1727186

Container Vegetable Gardening
By John Yazo

Container Vegetable Gardening is an ideal solution when you don’t have a yard to plant a garden and is also a way of gardening to add versatility to your yard.

Container gardening can be done to add accent or dimension to the landscape with the planting of vegetables or flowers. You can create the same effects with vegetables as you would with the planting of flowers. Just arrange the pots or containers that you plant with vegetables as you would if you were planting flowers. There are large varieties of colors and sizes of vegetable plants as there is in flowering plants.

Planters that can be used for container planting are endless. If it is strong enough to hold soil mix and plants you want to grow it can be used. Just make sure there are holes in the base of the container or pot for water to drain from.The most common types of planters that are used are your standard indoor plant pots.They are usually made of clay, ceramic, plastic or wood and are purchased at your local garden center or department store.

Soil mix for container planting should be a light weight mix. Soilless potting mix is the best for container planting because of it’s ability to aerate well and retain moisture. Soilless potting mix is usually a blend of peat, perlite and or vermiculite.

The planting of plants or seeds in containers is done the same way as would be done in a garden. Just follow the instruction that come with the plants or on the seed packet. The location that the containers are placed is also important. Read the instruction for location needed for what you are planting. Some plants need full sun, partial sun or even shade.

Watering of plants in containers needs to be checked on a daily bases. Containers don’t hold the volume of moisture as would be retained in garden soil with a good soil structure. Usually containers need to be watered daily if not every other day. Temperature and rainfall amounts are the two main factors in when watering and how much is needed. Keep the soil in the containers moist at all times.

Nutrients in the soil also need to be monitored regularly. Due to the frequent watering of container planting the nutrients can be easily washed from the soil. A slow release organic fertilizer will add the nutrients needed back in the soil.

A environment friendly and healthy way of gardening. Organic Gardening is away of gardening in harmony with nature. Growing a healthy and productive crop in a way that is healthier for both you and the environment.

John Yazo

http://www.organicheirloomgardening.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Yazo
http://EzineArticles.com/?Container-Vegetable-Gardening&id=1668037

Nearly Work-Free Vegetable Gardening
By Ian Pennington

Growing vegetables from your own garden is one of the best ways to provide your family with healthy and fresh produce. But starting a garden can be a time consuming and intimidating process, particularly for beginners. Fear of the amount of labor and time involved in planting and maintaining a garden keeps many would-be gardeners out of the garden and in the supermarket instead.

Much of this fear may be misplaced, however. There has been much experimentation in the gardening community in recent years aimed at developing innovative ways to reduce the amount of time and labor spent gardening, often with sensational results. Although there may be no such thing as completely work free vegetable gardening, there are definitely ways in which you are able to dramatically reduce the amount of labor and time you need to spend in your garden.

One of the best ways to lessen the work spent preparing and weeding your garden is through a gardening method known as “Lasagna Gardening” or “Sheet Mulching.” Lasagna gardening is a non-traditional, no-till method of gardening that relies on blanketing a garden plot with multiple layers of mulch obtained from locally available, and preferably organic, sources (such as weed clippings, chopped leaves, animal manure, compost, sawdust or seaweed). The lasagna gardening method greatly reduces the time and labor needed to prepare a new garden plot, and some gardeners report that they spend almost no time at all weeding a well-mulched lasagna garden. This may be as close to work free vegetable gardening as one can get.

Here are some additional suggestions to greatly reduce the amount of time and labor spent in your vegetable garden:

- Grow prolific vegetables. Vegetables like summer squash, pole green beans and indeterminate tomatoes produce large quantities of produce for extended periods during the summer. The amount of labor they require is very small in comparison to the harvest you will reap.
- Keep your garden small. It is easy to be overwhelmed by your garden, and many gardeners end up either producing much more than they can consume or giving up entirely. You will only need one or two zucchini or tomato plants to feed most families.
- Choose vegetables well suited for your climate. Although growing a long-season winter squash in Maine or keeping a heat-sensitive lettuce variety from bolting in Florida may be noteworthy accomplishments, they are also time-consuming projects. Stick to growing vegetables that are best suited to your region.
- Choose vegetable varieties that have a reputation of being easy to grow. Many seed catalogs will mark certain vegetable varieties as being especially easy to grow. Select these varieties if they are available.

By using gardening methods such as lasagna gardening and focusing on growing the most prolific, easy to grow vegetables for your region, you are on your way to nearly work free vegetable gardening.

Ian Pennington is an accomplished niche website developer and author.
To learn more about
Work Free Vegetable Gardening, please visit
Garden World Online for
current articles and discussions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_Pennington
http://EzineArticles.com/?Nearly-Work-Free-Vegetable-Gardening&id=1746287

Leaf Mold is an Excellent Soil Conditioner
By John Yazo

When fall comes around there is no shortage of leaves. There is something that you can do with the leaves that will benefit your garden. Turn your leaves into a free soil conditioner.

Leaf mold is a soil conditioner with low fertility. It is mainly used to improve the structure of soil by improving both water retention and drainage. It is also excellent to be used as a mulch,it can suppress weed growth and prevent evaporation. The earthworms love it and work hard to blend it into the soil for you. It is also good to use as a potting mix amendment for raising seedlings. A Mixture of equal parts of leaf mold, loam and compost make a good multi-purpose potting compost mix.

Leaves also are a great way to cover exposed soil in your garden beds over winter,piling leaves onto the soil surface will protect the soil from erosion due too heavy winter rains.This will protect the soil structure and the leaves can be dug into the soil or added to your compost pile in the spring.

Leaf mold is very easy to make. Just rake and collect all your leaves then put them into one place and let them to rot. You can also make a leaf mold bin just like a compost bin with 4 stakes and some wire mesh, or you can even put leaves into plastic bags to decompose. The containers that you use don’t really matter, as long as the leaves get moisture either by rain or you will have to wet leaves. If you’re using plastic bags then you will need to provide a few air holes in the bags.

Now all you need is time and patience. Some of the leaves will take longer to break down than other ones will. Once spring comes around you will have partially rotted leaves that can be used as a mulch. If you want fully composted leaves then leave them decomposing until fall. Once you start making leaf mold year after year you will soon have a full steady supply.

A environment friendly and healthy way of gardening. Organic Gardening is away of gardening in harmony with nature. Growing a healthy and productive crop in a way that is healthier for both you and the environment.

John Yazo

http://www.organicheirloomgardening.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Yazo
http://EzineArticles.com/?Leaf-Mold-is-an-Excellent-Soil-Conditioner&id=1669169

Growing Plants Inside a Container
By Kent Higgins

Gardening in containers gives even the smallest porch or patio the ability to project beauty and color or even fresh vegetables and spices for those who care for them. You can let your imagination run wild by utilizing container gardening, even if you live in a small apartment or home. There is a huge variety of plants, flowers, vegetables, and more that can be grown in pots and containers in even the smallest of perceived spaces.

Flower boxes, plantar boxes, window boxes, bay windows, sills, even creatively used fiberglass or plastic tubs and basins can be used to grow plants and flowers. There are literally millions of opportunities to grow plants, you just need to see them.

Before you use a container for plants, however, make sure you know what it’s properties, with soil and plants inside, will be. Will it drain well? At all? How strong is it, will it hold all that dirt and water? Is it large enough? Too large? Each plant is different and has different needs, so make sure your new home for your plant is fitting.

Plastic pots should have drainage holes and moisture trays or the ability to fit in them. Cheap, flimsy plastic can degrade and break down in sunlight, so make sure you use something sturdy enough. The bottoms of plastic 2-liter bottles will work if you cut small drainage holes in them, but don’t use them for more than a year before replacement.

Glazed ceramic pots are great and can have a lot of beauty and charm and intricate design, but they also need to have proper draining built in. Glaze does not allow water to pass through or soak in, so it needs to be provided.

Ceramics that haven’t been glazed will do well, but can dry out the soil too, so watch for that. They are also prone to breakage and conduct heat and cold very well, so they can harm the plants in them if you don’t have the proper control.

Wood containers can rot or break down and will absorb water, but will also give it back when the soil inside is dryer than the wood around it. They make great containers for many reasons, but can easily succumb to rot and ruin. To avoid this, grow only plants that die at the end of the season, then empty the pot and allow it sit dry and empty for the winter before reusing it. This will kill any rot that’s growing in the pot and greatly increase its lifespan.

If you’re growing plants that require deep roots or are growing several plants in one pot, make sure there is room for that. Deep pots for deep-rooted, tall plants are a must so that the plant not only has room to spread out, but so it won’t topple over when it gets larger. It’s better to grow a large plant that’s starting small in the pot it will be in for the rest of its life. Transplanting is hazardous and traumatic for most plants and can cause problems.

Finally, the color of the container is also important. In hot climates, use lighter-color containers so that the heat will be reflected and do the opposite in colder climes. Some people put their pot inside another pot when the seasons change, just to take advantage of the color factor. It can be that important.

Above all, though, make sure to have fun and to grow plants that you find rewarding and beautiful and you’ll definitely have a greener, happier home!

Who said there is no more to learn on the subject of decorative plant containers. Take advantage of our years of experience, visit plant-care.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kent_Higgins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Growing-Plants-Inside-a-Container&id=1772376

Heirloom Gardening
By John Yazo

Heirloom gardening is a type of gardening that is in a class of it’s own. There are many unique features in the heirloom varieties of bot vegetables and flowers. This method of gardening is one that has usually been past down from generation to generation along with the seeds.

Once you start heirloom gardening and discover all the unique features that heirloom varieties have over hybrid varieties you will most likely be hooked and never change back. The flavor, juiciness and sweetness of heirloom vegetables have no comparison to hybrid varieties.

The seeds used for this method of gardening are open pollinated. This means that the plant will produce seed naturally. When replanted the seed will reproduce the same plant as it’s parent plant for generation to generation to come. Hybrid seed will not reproduce the same plant when there seeds are saved and replanted. This means the gardener is dependent on the seed companies every year.

All heirloom gardeners have one thing in common. They choose this type of gardening to keep these types of crops and flowers fro going extinct. Every year more and more varieties of heirloom flowers, fruits and vegetables are lost. There are plant seeds that were brought to our country by our ancestors from all parts of the world.

When we save heirloom seeds we are saving apart of history and culture. When choosing seeds that you want to plant you can trace back your family tree and choose varieties that were the ones that your ancestors would of planted.

Choosing to grow heirloom vegetables in your garden will give you the assurance that your crop is pure and natural. There are not produced by genetic changed hybrid seed.

There is a growing interest in heirloom gardening. There are seed companies that are devoted in just heirloom seeds along with many seed exchange groups. These groups are where you can share your seeds with others along with your experience.

A environment friendly and healthy way of gardening. Organic Gardening is away of gardening in harmony with nature. Growing a healthy and productive crop in a way that is healthier for both you and the environment.

John Yazo

http://www.organicheirloomgardening.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Yazo
http://EzineArticles.com/?Heirloom-Gardening&id=1773145

Growing an Organic Garden
By John Yazo

Organic gardening is away of gardening by the use of natural fertilizers, pest control and working in harmony with nature. There are no synthetic or chemical fertilizers, insecticides or herbicides used.

This is all done by creating a healthy environment for plants and working with nature. Organic gardening is the same method used by nature in our forests, grasslands and meadows. Soil is the key to success in this method of gardening. Creating a good healthy soil structure with organic matter like compost will help in the natural defense if disease and insect problems in your garden by growing a healthy plant. Healthy plants have the ability to protect themselves from disease and insects naturally.

In creating a healthy environment that will benefit your garden you can incorporate the methods of companion planting and crop rotation. Companion planting will help by creating an environment that will attract beneficial insects and other natural means of insect control like the attraction of birds and toads to your garden. Crop rotation is a method that is used to help build a good healthy soil structure along with adding nutrients to the soil that the plants need to thrive.

Choosing the appropriate plants for your area, creating an attractive environment for beneficial insects, creating healthy garden soil, mulching and the proper watering of plants are just a few of the important parts of organic gardening.

Organic gardening can be done in any size garden, from container planting, raised bed gardening to full size gardens and for the new gardener to the experienced gardener.

A environment friendly and healthy way of gardening. Organic Gardening is away of gardening in harmony with nature. Growing a healthy and productive crop in a way that is healthier for both you and the environment.

John Yazo

http://www.organicheirloomgardening.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Yazo
http://EzineArticles.com/?Growing-an-Organic-Garden&id=1775726