The "no-dig" method is a popular way to start a vegetable garden. Regardless of soil condition a no-dig garden should thrive.
Another great method, for those of us who like to get in and feel the dirt between our fingers is "soil enrichment" to keep diseases at bay. Healthy, fertile soil is usually crawling with bugs and worms. It has long been established that not all the bugs in the garden are "bad" bugs. Just a quick point about worms. The commercial worm farms that are an excellent source of compost and worm castings - brilliant in the garden - come with worms. These worms are compost worms, suited to worm farms, but cannot survive outside if their worm farm environment, so don't be fooled into buying composting worms to put into your garden beds. They won't survive!
Organic Vegetables
As people are becomming more aware of the chemicals and hormones that are used in commercially grown vegetables there is an increasing demand for organically grown fresh produce. Unfortunately, you pay alot more, in some cases, for organically grown food. The good news is that you don't have to pay heaps or settle for less!
More and more people are turning to - or perhaps returning to - setting up their own vegetable gardens and are finding that it is alot easier than most people think to grow your own fresh food and by setting up a vegie plot you can rediscover the incredible flavours and textures from fresh food that have long been forgotten.
There is another misconception about vegetable gardening that I'd just like to clear up. You don't need a huge backyard to have a reasonable garden. Even flat/apartment dwellers can grow their own herbs and vegetables on patios or balconies - even on the kitchen window sill. See container gardens for tips on growing in a confined space. My vegie garden isn't huge, but it provides the 7 of us with most of our vegetables and all of our herbs. It didn't take alot of hard work to set the garden up, either. Setting Up An Organic Vegetable Garden:
Firstly I suppose I should define "organic gardening". This is simply growing plants without the use of chemical fertilisers or poisons for pest control. In an organic garden pests and weeds are controlled naturally, using companion planting, planting thickly and using alternatives to poisons.
Start by finding your site. Sunshine is one of the most important factors when growing vegies, so find a spot where your garden will get plenty of sun. I find it easier to peg out the site then run string around the pegs, so I keep the garden where I want it to be.
The next step is to spread a good thick layer of manure over the site. Cover the manure with a layer of newspapers or cardboard. Then add another layer of old manure and compost.
Allow this to rot down a little then get ready for planting.
Poke holes in the top and place your seedlings in the holes. Water in. Mulch well, making sure you don't have contact between the mulch and young plants.
Mulching helps to control the weeds and also stops the loss of alot of water through run off and evaporation, but the mulch can also burn young seedlings. A point to remember if you're purchasing mulch. Make sure that any timber products used in the mulch such as pine chips, haven't been chemically treated, the treatments are usually arsenic based, which leaches into the soil and then into your vegies and into you!
This is a great way to grow potatoes. Plant the eyes under a thick layer of straw and mulch and before too long you'll have a crop of potatoes - but remember not to eat any green spuds you turn up, they're toxic. I grow them in tyre stacks to conserve space, either way they taste fantastic!
Add blood and bone, compost etc. to the soil and turn it through. Grow green manure plants that can just be slashed back and dug into the soil to rot down. We have chickens so I dig through manure, even the feathers which have alot of nitrogen in them and work a bit like slow release fertiliser as they break down.Planting In Wide Rows:
In my garden I grow things in short fat rows, rather than long rows. I feel like I have more space and can therefore get more things in. It also cuts down on the weeding. Rather than planting 10 seedlings in a straight row, 30cm apart I tend to plant in squares, and put things much closer together. Occassionaly this can be a problem, like the time I planted 8 pumpkin vines snuggly beside 6 zucchini plants. PS, pumpkins over ran zucchini and we lost 4 of the plants! But the upside to that was that the remaining two plants were extremely hardy and so prolific that we ended up with more zucchini than we could use! So apply companion planting "rules" when using this wide row method.
There is no end to the variety of vegetables you choose to plant in your garden. And if you discover you over estimated your desire for brussel sprouts, then you can always sling them in the compost for next seasons' beds! I think this is one of the things I love about growing vegies. Nothing is wasted. What we don't use gets turned into compost or is fed to the chooks then turned into compostable material. It all gets turned into a big recyclable circle. There's no excess packaging - none at all, and all in all it's a very inexpensive and enjoyable way to provide your family and self with healthy food. Free Vegetables!
This past summer I decided that I'd try out "heirloom" seeds. They are generally open or self pollinating, not genetically engineered and old fashioned breeds of vegetables and herbs. This means that you can harvest seeds from open or self pollinating vegetables. Using seeds collected from hybrid, or genetically mucked around with vegetables mostly don't reproduce "true" fruit - the plants are not identical to the parent plant. This is really just a long way of saying that buying heirloom seeds allows for the initial outlay - the seeds cost approximately 10c - 85c more than regular seeds, but after this outlay you can harvest your own seeds for the following season.
Here is a step-by-step guide to harvesting your own seeds;
Ideally you would use tomatoes, cucumber, rock melon, capsicum, cucumber, pumpkins, eggplant. I like to leave a veg on each plant to run to seed - this isn't always successful, but mostly it is.
1) Choose fruit that is ripe or fully mature. Ideally you would collect veg from your own garden as shop bought will most likely have been harvested prior to reaching maturity - immature seeds are less likely to germinate.
2) Spoon or squeeze the seeds and pulp from the vegetable, placing it into a small bowl.
3) Add a little water to the bowl and allow the seeds to ferment in a warm spot for about 5 days. Stir the mixture a couple of times a day to help the fermentation process. Naturally the fermentation takes place faster in warm weather, so in cool weather place the mixture in the warmest place possible.
4) To remove the seeds from the fermented liquid strain through a fine sieve - make sure the mesh is finer than the seeds - and wash the pulp away, leaving behind the clean seeds.
5) Leave the seeds in the sieve to dry in an airy, shaded spot or spread out on newspaper and allow to dry in the shade. This will take 3 or 4 days, stir them around occassionally. Don't try and speed the drying up by putting the seeds out in the sun as the high water content in the seeds is quite likely to cook them!
6) Once the seeds are dry to the touch they can be placed in the sun to complete the drying process. Allow up to 2 days.
7) Package your dried seeds in envelopes or small paper bags, which will allow them to dry out further. Avoid packing them in plastic or glass as they will sweat and rot. Label the envelopes and store in a cool dry spot until planting time.
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