Sixteen helpful tips for successful gardening
1. Plants will stop growing when temperature goes beneath 6 degrees Celsius. Keep this in mind when you are planning your garden or your growing containers, especially when your country has cold winters. When it comes to biannual plants, this is also good to know, since the bigger their size, the more chances they have to survive the winter.
2. It is important to feed the soil little but often. In fact you are feeding the microorganisms in the ground, who will then feed the plants. You can feed the soil by placing mulches on top of it, where it will break down and move downwards.
3. Try, if possible, not to disturb the soil by digging. Since the microorganisms live in the first five centimetres from the top of the soil, they can be damaged or even die when the ground is turned over.
4. Feed fresh organic waste, also known as mulches. Mulches can be made out of any organic material, like grass or leaves. It is a layer you put on top of the soil to feed the microorganisms. Certain types of plants need different microorganisms, and therefore different mulches. Woody plants, like for instance Thyme, need woody mulches like bark, leaves, and twigs etcetera. Vegetables on the other hand need mulches like grass clippings and manure. Using mulches also has the great advantage of keeping weeds down. A word of caution, though: slugs love laying their eggs in mulches, so in this case the use of some seaweed mixed into the mulch can help.
5. Weed around your plants to help them grow. Weeds naturally compete with your plants for nutrients, so by taking them out your plant has more space and food to develop in a healthy manner.
6. Avoid monoculture. This will protect the biodiversity in your garden, which is important because it preserves the balance in the ecosystem.
7. Everything in nature eats everything else, so encourage friendly predators into your garden to keep pests in check. If space allows, it is good to make a pond in your garden to invite frogs in. Frogs are the natural enemies of slugs, which will keep the latter in check and save your crops. Another example is animal manure, which will attract more soil beetles which will in turn eat the eggs of the slugs and again keep the slug population in check.
8. If the natural balance has failed somewhere you can help by doing the following:
- Picking off slugs from the plants and the ground.
- Picking off the caterpillars from the plants.
- Pick off the diseased leaves and burn them, which will make sure the disease doesn’t get back into the soil.
- Some diseases can be prevented or treated by spraying your plants with natural solutions. For the prevention of blight on potatoes and tomatoes you can spray them every two weeks with Horsetail (herb) in a water solution. Blight unfortunately can’t be treated, so make sure you prevent it.
Your plants can be treated against aphids by using organic hand soap and water or herbs in the family of Artemisia in a water solution. - Protecting cabbages and carrots from root fly damage by covering them completely with reusable fleece.
9. Make a wormery, since this has many advantages. The worms will eat all of your fruit and vegetable waste and in turn supply you with the best fertilizer on the planet. The by-product, worm liquid, can also be fed to your plants in a dilution of ten to one with water.
10. Use compost tea and EM on the soil and the plants in order to supply it with the right kind of microorganisms.
11. Make sure the pH in your soil is at the right level for the plants you are growing. In order for the plants to access nutrients they need the right pH around their roots. You can test the pH level with pH meter, available at your local garden centre. A pH of 5.5 – 6.5 is acidic; 6.5 is considered neutral; 6.5 – 7.5 is alkaline. Most vegetables prefer neutral soil. Mostly plants with a woody stem, like Thyme, prefer acidic soil.
12. Having the proper kind of wind brakes can increase your yields by thirty percent. A wind brake can be a tree or a shrub that prevents some wind to get through and damage your crops. You don’t want a wind brake that is solid, since it will cause turbulences behind it, which can do even more damage.
13. If possible, try to put your plants facing south. If this is not possible, west or east, since having your plants facing north can diminish your results due to lack of sunlight.
14. Of course it is important to water your plants, especially when growing in containers. Make sure though you don’t drown your plants! Stick your finger in the soil, because the top soil might be dry but underneath it is may be wet. When this is the case, don’t water just yet.
15. Try to only use organic compost and organically grown seeds. After the first year you can try to save your own seeds. Therefore it’s good to start off with the Heirloom or other old organic varieties seeds, since they will produce vegetables that are the same as the “parent” plant. F-1 varieties are hybrids and will not produce good seeds. Try to avoid them.
16. It is important to practice crop rotation. This prevents the build up of diseases in your beds, due to the fact that no one family is in the bed for more than once every five years. Some people even rotate crops around for longer strands of time, up to eight years, since there are eight plant families. In order for this method to be effects it’s important to be aware of the families of the wild weeds, since the pests and disease can also live on them. This would render the crop rotation method unsuccessful.
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