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Organic Gardening For Dummies
Published:
March 9, 2009
Overview
Organic Gardening For Dummies, 2nd Edition shows readers the way to ensure a healthy harvest from their environmentally friendly garden. It covers information on the newest and safest natural fertilizers and pest control methods, composting, cultivation without chemicals, and how to battle plant diseases. It also has information on updated equipment and resources. It helps readers plant organically year-round, using herbs, fruits, vegetables, lawn care, trees and shrubs, and flowers. The tips and techniques included in Organic Gardening For Dummies, 2nd Edition are intended to reduce a garden's impact on both the environment and the wallet.
If you're considering organic gardening, take a look at the benefits of making the switch to a more earth-friendly way to cultivate your yard. To ensure healthy-growing plants, survey your property to find which plants are best suited for your landscape and garden, and check out non-toxic ways to control pests and fertilize organically.
About The Author
Ann Whitman is the author of the first edition of Organic Gardening For Dummies.
Suzanne DeJohn is an editor with the National Gardening Association, the leading garden-based educational nonprofit organization in the U.S. NGA's programs and initiatives highlight the opportunities for plant-based education in schools, communities, and backyards across the country. These include award-winning Web sites garden.org and kidsgardening.org.
The National Gardening Association (NGA) is committed to sustaining and renewing the fundamental links between people, plants, and the earth. Founded in 1972 as “Gardens for All” to spearhead the community garden movement, today’s NGA promotes environmental responsibility, advances multidisciplinary learning and scientifi c literacy, and creates partnerships that restore and enhance communities.
NGA is best known for its garden-based curricula, educational journals, international initiatives, and several youth garden grant programs. Together these reach more than 300,000 children nationwide each year. NGA’s Web sites, one for home gardeners and another for those who garden with kids, build community and offer a wealth of custom content.
Articles From The Book
3 results
Organic Gardening
Articles
Animals, fish, and birds all provide organic fertilizers that can help plants grow. Animal-based fertilizers contain nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium ¯ the primary nutrients plants need to grow. They each play a critical role in plant growth and development.
If your soil is deficient or if you're growing vegetables, fruits, or other demanding crops, you may want to supplement the soil's nutrients with these animal-based fertilizers:
Manures: Animal manures provide lots of organic matter to the soil, but most have low nutrient value.
Organic Gardening
Articles
When you're planning your organic garden, you have to first take an inventory of your site. Your goal is to encourage healthy, pest-resistant plants, so choose plants that can grow to their full potential where you plant them. Consider these factors when laying out your organic garden:
Sun and shade: Duration and time of day and year that the sun shines directly on the site.
Organic Gardening
Articles
Not all garden insects and bugs are bad. In fact, gardens rely on beneficial insects to keep the general insect population in balance. Beneficial insects are the ones that prey on or parasitize insect pests (the bad guys). You can buy many of these beneficial insects from mail-order catalogs to increase your local populations.
Organic Gardening
Articles
Designing a garden often goes beyond deciding which plants you want to grow and the type of function you want your garden to have. Thematic elements can also influence the look of a garden. Do you have a soft spot for old-fashioned English rose gardens? Or Japanese Zen gardens? Or even sandy deserts filled with cacti and succulents?
Organic Gardening
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To manage garden pests without using harmful insecticides you have to know what to look for. Here's a short list of insects that can damage your garden vegetables and flowers and the organic gardening measures for controlling them:
Aphids: These pear-shaped pests pierce holes in plant tissue and suck the juices.
Organic Gardening
Articles
When choosing plants for your garden, pay attention to its hardiness, which determines how well it handles climate extremes, such as cold and heat. Plant catalogs often use the term rather loosely to indicate whether you can expect a particular plant to live in a cold-winter climate, but hardiness really is a measure of a plant's ability to survive all the aspects of a particular climate.
Organic Gardening
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The health of garden plants depends on the soil's composition — the proper balance of mineral pieces, organic matter, air, and water. Knowing the type of soil you have can help you choose techniques to enhance its good qualities.
The best garden soil should have proper balance of minerals, water, organic matter, and air.
Organic Gardening
Articles
Many names of plant diseases describe the symptoms they cause, such as powdery mildew, leaf curl, and club root diseases. Some diseases attack only one plant part, whereas others can affect the entire plant.
The following list describes some of the most common garden diseases:
Anthracnose: This fungi attacks beans, vine crops, tomatoes, and peppers.
Organic Gardening
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You can grow blueberries in USDA Zones 3 to 10. The blueberry plant (Vaccinium species) offers small white flowers in spring, glossy green leaves in summer, and spectacular crimson foliage in fall. As an edible fruit, blueberries can't be beat for fresh eating, pies, pancakes, dessert sauce, and jam.
Choose one of these three species to suit your climate:
Lowbush blueberry (V.
Organic Gardening
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Perhaps the most popular small fruits for the home garden, strawberries are also among the hardest to grow organically. Strawberries have many insect pests and diseases that damage plants and berries alike. Establishing your plants in well-drained, fertile soil and maintaining a weed-free patch are essential for success.
Organic Gardening
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Deer are among the most troublesome of garden pests. A deer or two can ravage an entire garden overnight. Deer eat plants and trample vegetation, and bucks rub their antlers on young trees to remove the "velvet" and to mark their territory.
Several types of repellents may keep deer out of your yard:
Soap: Hang bars of soap from low tree branches or from stakes so that the bars are about 30 inches off the ground.
Organic Gardening
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Rabbits nibble the foliage of almost any garden plant, returning day and night to finish the job. Rabbits tend to eat vegetables and flowers in spring and summer; sprouting tulips are a favorite spring treat. In fall and winter, they favor twigs and bark and can cause considerable damage to landscape trees and shrubs.
Organic Gardening
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Compost is material, usually made up of yard waste and food scraps, containing nutrients that improve your soil. You can buy it, but making your own compost saves money. The process isn't complicated, and commercial composting bins and containers on the market make composting a mess-free, hassle-free process.When you make compost, you create a pile of material to be composted, mix the materials thoroughly at the correct ratios of carbon and nitrogen and keep the pile watered just enough to keep it moist but with enough air to breathe.
Organic Gardening
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The biggest mistake beginning gardeners make is using lousy or too-thin soil. Before planting anything in your yard, prepare your garden beds by digging to loosen the soil and adding organic material! This prep work can save you untold disappointment and, perhaps more than any other factor, assure a bountiful and delicious harvest.
Organic Gardening
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IPM (integrated pest management) is a practice that combines biological, cultural, physical and chemical strategies to control pests. Organic gardeners use IPM techniques as the least toxic, least environmentally disruptive solutions for fighting pests and plant disease.
IPM involves the following key practices:
Using cultural techniques to promote plant health: Rotating crops, sanitizing gardens, using traps and barriers, mulching, promoting air circulation and water drainage, conserving soil moisture, planting companion and disease-resistant varieties, composting, and building soil health.
Organic Gardening
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Rodents such as squirrels groundhogs, moles, and meadow voles can do a lot of damage to a garden. Even though these small rodents don't eat everything overnight, you need to find a way to keep these pests out of your garden:
Woodchucks: Groundhogs generally stay within about 100 feet of their dens, venturing out morning and evening to find food.
Organic Gardening
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Organic gardening helps you make your garden less inviting to pests. Most pests are opportunists that take advantage of weak or stressed plants and take up residence where the eating is easy. Here are some simple strategies that will reduce the vulnerability of your garden plants:
Put plants in the right place: Choose the best location for each plant, taking into account its particular needs for water, sunlight, and nutrients.
Organic Gardening
Articles
If you're considering organic gardening, take a look at the benefits of making the switch to a more earth-friendly way to cultivate your yard. To ensure healthy-growing plants, survey your property to find which plants are best suited for your landscape and garden, and check out non-toxic ways to control pests and fertilize organically.
Organic Gardening
Articles
The life cycles of all the plants you choose for your garden play a large part in the garden's overall design. A plant's life cycle consists of the amount of time it takes for them to become mature enough to bloom, produce seed, and ultimately die. Depending on the plant, your garden design can focus on color, form, or foliage.
Organic Gardening
Articles
Fertilizers made from plants generally have low to moderate N-P-K (Nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium) values, but their nutrients quickly become available in the soil for your plants to use. Some of them even provide an extra dose of trace minerals and micronutrients. The most commonly available plant-based fertilizers include the following:
Nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium are the three nutrients plants need in the largest quantities; they're sometimes referred to as the primary nutrients.
Organic Gardening
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Besides the obvious reasons for organic gardening, like growing pesticide-free food and maintaining a landscape without synthetic fertilizers, here are just a few of the many other reasons to become an organic gardener:
Human health: Many pesticides harm people, causing illness when they're consumed or when they make contact with exposed skin.
Organic Gardening
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When you plan your garden you have to start by assessing what you have. You want your garden to prosper in your climate and to pick plants that thrive in your soil. You must also take existing buildings, walls, and walkways into account in your garden plan. There are certain classic gardening problems and some standard solutions:
You have too much shade: Too much shade is often a problem you can remedy by pruning some trees and bushes.
Organic Gardening
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Organic fertilizers are a kinder, gentler way to give plants the nutrients they need. Organic fertilizers usually come from plants, animals, or minerals and contain a variety of nutrients to enhance the soil ecosystem. Synthetic fertilizers don't enhance soil life or add organic matter. Other benefits for using organic fertilizers over synthetics are:
They release their nutrients more slowly in the soil, when the plants need them, so they last longer.
Organic Gardening
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Before you start planting, you need to create a garden plan. Start by using graph paper and drawing a plan of your garden site to scale. Plot every feature you find on your site, both natural and those you or your predecessors have put in place. Use a measuring tape to get approximate measurements. You may also want to indicate areas of sun and shade.
Organic Gardening
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In organic gardening, preventing plant stress and environmental imbalances are important in controlling disease. The only plant diseases you can control effectively after the plants become infected are those caused by fungi. Some of the organic products and techniques listed here must be used with care:
Solarization: Solarization captures the sun's heat under a sheet of clear plastic and literally bakes the soil, killing fungi and bacteria as well as weeds.
Organic Gardening
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Overall, plants need 16 specific elements, or nutrients, for proper growth. When enough of each nutrient is present in soil, plants grow optimally. If even one element is in short supply, plants can't grow as well. Think of the weakest-link theory, which says that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
