An Introduction to Organic Vegetable Gardening

Organic vegetable gardening is simply growing vegetables in your garden while not using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Organic vegetable gardening takes a little more time, preparation, planning and care, but the scrumptious results you get when harvesting your results are well worth it. And by using only organic means to grow your vegetables, you won't have to worry about harming the environment, or putting potentially harmful chemicals and materials into your family's bodies either.

Preparing your garden bed for planting organic vegetables will take a little time and patience. Since your goal is to use only organic materials, you won't be applying traditional fertilizers or weed killers. Instead, you'll first choose your vegetable garden plot, then turn the earth. Remove as much of the weeds, roots and large rocks as you can, then mix in some organic compost materials. If you already have compost made, this will be mixed into your vegetable garden bed. Otherwise you'll want to add other natural elements such as animal manure, grass and leaf clippings, or kitchen fruit and vegetable scraps. If you have a fireplace, mixing in wood ash works well too. Used coffee or tea grounds make excellent compost materials as well.

If you didn't have ready made compost to prepare your vegetable garden bed, you'll need to give the fresh scraps and other additions at least 3 weeks to start decomposing. Turn the soil in your garden bed every few days, and continue to remove any weeds or roots that might still be there.

Once your garden bed is ready, it's time to start planting your vegetable seeds and starter plants. You'll want to make sure you create rows for the plants so there's room between for watering and weeding. Also place each plant far enough apart along the rows to allow for growth and maturity. Leaving extra space between the plants on each row will also make weeding and mulching easier too, plus it can help keep pests under control.

One of the most difficult aspects many gardeners find with organic vegetable gardening, is dealing with various pests. Since chemical pesticides are not used in an organic vegetable garden, you must resort to other, completely natural pest control methods. There are many, and some work better than others.

One popular natural pest control method used in organic vegetable gardening, is to plant a cover crop in your garden. Some cover crops will repel many common pests, so planting something such as marigold around your vegetables can help keep pests away.

Choosing disease and pest resistant seeds and starter plants can help too, as can using plenty of mulch to help keep weed growth down. Pulling weeds as soon as they appear helps tremendously as well.

Sometimes simple tricks work to help repel pests in an organic vegetable garden too. Putting tinfoil on the ground around the stems of plants for instance, can help repel cutworms. There are also various sticky insect traps that can work too.

Spraying a Kelp tea tea on many plants helps too, or you can simply pick pests off by hand as you find them in your vegetable garden.