If you need some organic gardening tips, here are three of my best. I plant a huge garden every summer – with my primary focus on my kitchen herb garden which has treasures like parsley, cilantro, chives, rosemary, etc. Yes, I have some veggies, too, but I love the herbs best. I go out in my garden every day and gather a small handful of wonders like parsley and just eat them straightaway. Everything is organic, of course, and eating greens right out of the ground is the best possible eating-for-health practice in the world.
Organic Herb Gardening Tip #1
Whenever I sowed seeds in the spring I would have a terrible time with the birds eating my new seeds. I love birds and feed them all year – just not where I plant my new garden. I have two indoor cats and one day while cleaning their litter box I suddenly thought about spreading the contents around my garden. Magic! Since that time the birds have totally avoided my seeds. Obviously they can smell the cats (at least I guess that’s the explanation) and even though they can’t see any cats ready to pounce, they stay far away. I also empty some litter into my gardening area even in the winter and then work it into the soil in the spring. If you’ve ever been around cat litter I’m sure you know that it’s quite pungent and obviously the smell lingers for quite some time.
Organic Herb Gardening Tip #2
All year long I drink gallons of ‘good’ tea – meaning it’s organic with the untreated paper tea bags. I save all of the bags, rather than throw them away, and dump them into my garden soil. The bag dissolves and the tea leaves become part of the soil and enrich it. I definitely have stronger, healthier plants since I started doing this and I feel good about the recycling.
Organic Herb Gardening Tip #3
When I plant seedlings, as opposed to seed, I put the plants out fairly early. But rather than just putting them in the ground, I buy “compostable” paper cups and cut out the bottoms. I turn them upside down (wide part at the bottom) and put them around the baby plants. This protects them while they’re getting started, gives them their own little ‘eco pod’ or greenhouse while the cup lasts and it forces them to grow straight, rather than curl over or get twisted. I tested this out for two years – planted some with cups and some without and the difference was noticeable.
If you want a culinary herb garden like mine, these organic gardening tips might be helpful. If you have any you are willing to share, please let us know. I suspect that with the current economic trouble, that is sadly only going to worse in the months and years to come, that gardens will be an ever more popular pastime in the future.
Jeremy Shumake says
My wife is going to do a garden this year and I have to help with the heavy stuff. Grin. That’s what us guys do. Anyway, we both want it to be organic so this is helpful. Gardening is a craze here in the Netherlands since the EU economy (and I guess the US economy?) really sucks.