John Myers
Creating your own organic garden is the dream of many people. Growing healthy organic fruits and vegetables is also a lot easier than you might think. So if you have a garden, go for it! Create an organic garden there.
Create your own organic garden
Creating an organic garden is not as difficult as one might think. And the initial effort is definitely worth it because the quality of your food in your private organic garden is entirely in your hands.
You can now produce natural and healthy vegetables for yourself and your family. Vegetables that have never been in contact with chemicals. Vegetables that grew without artificial fertilizer. Vegetables that were harvested shortly before processing and therefore have the highest possible content of vital substances.
What a good feeling to know that you are no longer dependent on fruit and vegetables that are often outdated and almost worthless, which come from automated greenhouses, have been treated with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides and hardly have an identifiable taste.
Of course, you could buy organic fruit and vegetables in health food stores or organic supermarkets. But from your own garden, it is simply much fresher and of even better quality.
But before you can create your own organic garden, you often have to organize a garden in the first place.
Create organic gardens: On the balcony, terrace, or in the backyard
Don’t have a garden yet? It doesn’t matter. You can lease one. Maybe together with like-minded friends? An organic garden is much more fun together. And on holiday you can also take turns tending the garden.
Maybe you also have a backyard? A balcony, a terrace? You can create an organic garden anywhere. Fruit and vegetables can also be grown in pots, tubs, buckets, and old troughs, basically, in any container, you can find.
You can even plant vegetables and herbs in old drainpipes that you set up vertically and saw a few holes in. This is called “vertical gardening” and is particularly suitable for people who have very little space, e.g. B. only a small balcony.
Always sow some flowers between your vegetables and in no time a gray yard will become a colorful and mostly edible paradise.
Sun and safety measures in our own organic garden
When choosing your “growing area”, make sure that the sun shines there at least five to six hours a day. Also, think about the shadow your house or garage casts.
If you also know certain animal populations (rabbits, deer, etc.) that might be interested in your future vegetables, then you should think of a fence or other barriers.
However, a fence is not possible in all areas (nature reserves or similar). As soon as you know where you will create your organic garden and as soon as it is fenced off – if necessary – you can start.
Seeds and seedlings for your organic garden
Which TYPES of plants you grow in your organic garden depend entirely on your personal taste.
However, when it comes to the right VARIETIES of plants, you should check with your local garden center or experienced home gardeners in the neighborhood to find out which varieties are best suited to your particular geographic and climatic conditions.
Examples of a type of plant are the apple or the onion. There are now different VARIETIES of apples and onions. Apple varieties are e.g. B. Elstar, Jonagold, Golden Delicious, Goldparmäne, Boskop, Gewürzluike, Brettacher, etc.
Types of onions would be B. Stuttgart Giants, Sturon, Snowball etc.
Young organic vegetable plants and organic herb plants are often available for sale in health food stores or in the farm shops of organic farms. Of course, you can also grow your own seedlings.
There are many ways to purchase organic seeds on the internet. It is extremely important that you use real organic seeds. You are supporting a movement that is well on the way to freeing itself from its dependency on large seed companies.
If you are interested, you can also take part in the “Private Seed Archive” project, where there is an extensive catalog of countless old vegetable varieties.
Over time, as you become more knowledgeable about growing vegetables, you can make yourself useful as a seed keeper, harvest seeds from a variety of your choice, and send them to the Private Seed Archive.
hybrid seed? Nothing for the organic garden
So-called hybrid plants usually develop from conventional seeds. On the seed package, the designation “F1” is often used instead of “hybrid”, which also indicates a hybrid seed.
If you want to harvest your own seeds from these plants in the fall so that you don’t have to buy seeds again next year, then you may be out of luck with these plants and their seeds.
In extreme cases, the plants do not form any seeds at all or the seeds are not germinable. However, if they germinate, the plant from which you harvested the seed will hardly grow, but a plant with completely new properties – usually with negative properties (e.g. short growth, tiny fruits, or similar).
This is one of the main characteristics of hybrid plants and is intended as such by seed companies. After all, all farmers and gardeners should have to buy seeds again year after year.
Organic seeds and then possibly also from old regional varieties produce plants from which you can store seeds for next year.
The plants and their seeds are generally varietal, resulting in the same plant with the same characteristics over and over again.
The soil in your organic garden
Before you create your organic garden, before you sow or plant, you should check the quality of your soil. Because: Depending on the quality of your soil, you will have success or failure. If your soil is very stony, you should first remove at least some of the stones.
If your soil is mostly clay (if you pat the moist soil into a clod, the clod will stay in place) or sandy (the soil won’t pat into clods), you should improve it with organic matter. Compost or well-seasoned manure (e.g. from horses or cattle) or, of course, a mixture of both are suitable for this.
It is best if you make your own compost. A shredder that shreds any clippings from your garden into fine compostable material is very practical. You should also get used to a polished floor in your beds. Instead, mulch.
Mulching means that you distribute organic material (not composted) such as leaves, kitchen waste, branch and lawn clippings between your plants and especially on the pits of young fruit trees.
Compost and mulch ensure over the long term that your soil is protected from drought and wind, that beneficial soil organisms and beneficial insects find food and shelter, and that your vegetables get all the nutrients they need. A pleasant side effect of mulching is that you hardly have to dig more. The soil remains naturally loose and fertile.
Creating an organic garden: not without effective microorganisms
For everyone who is creating an organic garden or has been cultivating one for a long time, there is a valuable helper who can make the soil more fertile, the plants more resilient, and the harvest lusher.
For example, would you like to plant tomatoes? Then it is better to buy seedlings in cool regions. Tomatoes need a germination temperature of about 20 degrees. This means that in Central Europe they could be sown in May at the earliest.
Since it is often too cold for tomatoes as early as September or October, it could happen that your tomato plants do not even make it to fruit maturity or at least will not produce many fruits.
However, if you have real power soil in your garden or in your pots, the little plants you sow later will quickly catch up with the advance of the greenhouse seedlings you have brought up. Power soil is very easy to obtain with the use of EM. EM is Effective Microorganisms.
This is a combination of different non-GMO bacteria such as lactic acid bacteria, photosynthetic bacteria, and yeasts.
These microorganisms are usually found in healthy and fertile soil. However, if the plants are ailing, susceptible to pests or only growing slowly, this means that the soil is no longer in its natural balance.
The “bad” bacteria such. B. Putrefaction bacteria predominate and in turn attract snails and other unwelcome guests. The “good”, i.e. useful, soil bacteria are in the minority in this case. So how do you get beneficial bacteria back into the soil? With EM. All the microorganisms in EM are none other than those beneficial bacteria that most soils today lack.
As soon as the number of beneficial bacteria in your soil increases again, the soil quality, the soil fertility, and at the same time the plant health and consequently the harvest volume increase – things that make a freshly minted organic gardener with a newly created organic garden almost burst with pride.
But how is EM used?
The application of EM-1
EM-1 is a product made from Effective Microorganisms and brings fertility and harmony to almost every garden. It has infinite uses. Here is a small selection:
EM in the organic garden: High soil fertility
When you start your organic garden, start by not throwing any organic material in the trash.
Instead, shred all your compostable waste as finely as possible (e.g. with a shredder), as only then will the effective microorganisms have sufficient attack surfaces and quickly turn your compost material into fertile garden soil.
Each time you layer new compost material on your compost pile, spray it with undiluted EM-1 and then cover it with a thin layer of soil. Your mulch material is also sprayed with EM-1 before application, mixed, and then spread over the soil.
If you have at least two months before sowing seeds or planting the seedlings, then you can prepare something called bokashi. This is fermented compost material that is produced as follows:
Finely comminuted compost material is mixed with rock dust and – if available – animal manure (preferably chicken manure), sprayed or watered with undiluted EM-1® and covered with plastic film (secured with stones all around), and left in a warm, but not full sun place.
This mixture is left to ferment for three to four weeks (only in the warm season). Small quantities can be filled into plastic bags and stored tightly closed in a warm place.
After a month at most, the fermented material will be buried – about 10 to 20 cm deep. If you want to use the Bokashi for vegetable beds, then bury it there along your future row of plants.
It can be seeded or planted another four weeks later, but not sooner, otherwise, the fermented mixture would be too acidic for young plants.
EM for fruit trees
If you want to bury the EM-Bokashi around a fruit tree, then do this – depending on the size of the tree – in several places along the tree pit.
Old trees that may not have produced a satisfactory harvest for a long time can really get going again. Young fruit trees should also be watered once a week with EM-1® (diluted 1:10 with water).
EM for seedlings or diseased plants
Initially, newly planted plants should be watered once a week with EM-1 (diluted 1:200 with water).
If plants or trees are ailing or infested by pests, they can be sprayed with EM-1 (1:50) (also preventively every 10 to 14 days). Make sure that EM-1 does not touch the plants undiluted.
For large organic gardens: “Propagate” EM-1
If you are creating a large organic garden, it is worth propagating EM-1. In this way, you can prepare more than 30 liters of so-called EM-a from one liter of EM-1. This requires some equipment. But once this is taken care of, it can be used again and again.
You need:
- Sugar cane molasses (one liter of molasses per liter of EM-1)
- Fermentation canister with a capacity of at least 33 liters
- Tub for a water bath in which the canister fits
- Heater (e.g. one for aquariums)
- And of course EM-1
Now mix one liter of EM-1® with one liter of sugar cane molasses (health food store) and 31 liters of water, fill the mixture into a fermentation canister and keep it for 7 to 10 days at temperatures between 30 and 35 degrees (this works in a water bath with aquarium heater).
During this time, the microorganisms multiply rapidly and use sugar cane molasses as a nutrient solution.
The resulting microorganism liquid can then be used just like EM-1.
Creating an organic garden: Important Rules
The following rules should give you some basic help:
- Label pots and beds
Anyone who is just starting an organic garden tends to forget to carefully label their beds or pots. It is believed that it is easy to remember what has been sown and where. Not even close. You generally can’t.
Label each seed row so that you know later what you have sown where. Otherwise (if you’re not very familiar with the appearance of each plant at first) you may inadvertently weed your own vegetable seedlings.
- Mixed culture and crop rotation
When planning and creating your organic garden, also remember the rules of mixed cultivation and crop rotation.
Mixed culture means that you only plant those plants together on the same bed that gets along well with each other and may even protect each other from pests, e.g. B. carrots and onions, which are characterized by a particularly harmonious neighborhood.
Tomatoes and cucumbers don’t like each other that much. Cucumbers, on the other hand, get along just as well with dill in the garden as they do in the salad bowl. Please plant beans and potatoes far apart. On the other hand, beans are welcome to grow together with lettuce on a bed.
From year to year you should plant the vegetables you grow in different plots of your garden. This is called crop rotation. For example, if you grew carrots in one spot, try tomatoes in the same spot next year. On the other hand, plant the carrots where beans grew last year.
You should do this because each vegetable requires different amounts of different nutrients. If you keep planting the same vegetable in the same spot, then that spot will always be unilaterally deprived of exactly that combination of nutrients that this one plant species needs.
In the following year, this means that the vegetables no longer find enough of their nutrient combination. Therefore, changing the cultivation areas ensures that the necessary nutrients are available at all times and everywhere for all the different vegetables and herbs.
Likewise, following the rules of crop rotation can eradicate certain diseases in the soil. After harvesting your first organic vegetables, you’ll probably wonder why you didn’t start an organic garden sooner. And you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to cultivate your own organic products. Of course, there will also be failures with one or the other vegetable. But learn from it and you will do better next year.
In any case, with your own organic garden, you not only save a lot of money, but you can also ensure that you and your family can eat really natural vegetables that you cannot buy anywhere else in this quality and freshness.
In addition, a garden is simply a lot of fun and you can of course also plant lots of flowers, medicinal herbs, and rarities among all your fruit and vegetables.
An organic garden is definitely one of the most beautiful, useful, and colorful hobbies there is – for the whole family.
