When it comes to organic gardening, you want the best of both worlds. You want healthy, bug free plants without resorting to toxins or pesticides. However, garden pests don’t always cooperate. One great organic solution is to plant companion plants. These plants can help to ward off bugs and make the plants you love grow bigger and stronger. Here are some examples:

Plant Catnip with Collard Greens

Catnip helps prevent flea-beetle damage on the collards.

Surround Broccoli and Potatoes with Sweet Alyssum

This quick to spread, fragrant, low-growing, flowering plant is a member of the mustard family, with a taste similar to horseradish. It also attracts beneficial insects to protect your broccoli and potatoes, and you can eat it.

 Protect Spinach with Radishes

Planting radishes near your spinach helps to keep leaf miners away from delicate spinach leaves and allows the radishes to grow unharmed underground.

Let Corn be Your Beanstalks

Allow beans to grow up the tall corn stalks and you will help protect the corn from predators. Bean plants draw in beneficial insects that eat the bugs that love corn.

Grow Cabbage with Thyme, Dill, and Tomatoes

Thyme repels cabbage worm, while dill attracts cabbageworm predators. Cabbage helps dill grow strong and upright. Tomatoes also repel diamondback moth larva that likes to chew on cabbage leaves.

Defend Carrots or Beans with Rosemary

Rosemary is not only a tasty herb, it also repels bean beetles and carrot flies.

Save Your Roses with Garlic

Plant garlic alongside your roses to ward off bugs.

Plant a Border of Marigolds and Wormwood

Marigolds repel a variety of bugs, including nematodes that attack the roots of your melons. Wormwood repels animals like deer and rabbits as well as white flies. Together they make a great border to help keep your organic garden pest free.

Plant smart and keep your garden healthy.

Know Your Produce – Perfect Produce Is Unnatural

There is nothing quite like the taste of a fresh fruit or vegetable straight from the garden. To the eye of the gardener, this vegetable picked ripe off of the vine is perfect. They nurtured it, carefully tended to it, and then finally, get to enjoy the fruit of their labors. However, compare this vegetable to one at the grocery store and it is suddenly asymmetrical, small, not candy apple red, and even has, gasp!, a brown spot.

To gardeners, this poses the question, “What is it about those grocery store vegetables that make them all so perfectly colored, perfectly big, and perfectly symmetrical? And, how did they become the standard of how a vegetable should look?” The truth of the matter is that they look perfect because they are unnatural.

In order to understand the differences between fresh produce from a garden and what you see on the average grocery store shelf, you’ve got to look far beyond what is apparent on the surface. In fact, it all comes down to the minutest material of the plant, it’s DNA. As we have gained an understanding of genetics, we’ve also learned how to manipulate the genetic material of the food we grow, for good, and for bad. Let’s take a look.

Heirlooms

We’ll start with what’s natural, the way fruits and vegetables have been grown and propagated for thousands of years. It’s a very simple concept: you save the seeds of a fruit or vegetable with favorable characteristics, (typically color, shape, size, and flavor), and plant them year after year. Other than selecting which fruit or vegetable seeds to save, the seeds are in no way manipulated. The plants are allowed to open pollinate and ripen in their own time. Today, we refer to these plants as heirlooms. Since seeds from heirloom plants can be harvested and planted year after year, a farmer or gardener never has to purchase those particular seeds again. In a sense, it’s the ultimate sustainable agriculture practice.

Figure 1. If an heirloom plant is allowed to open pollinate with other plants of the same variety, the seeds will produce a fruit identical to the parent plant. Source: Kerry Soltis

Hybrids

Heirlooms, however, like all things good and natural, are not perfect. They have a relatively small gene pool and typically lack disease resistance. As we began to learn more about the genetics of these heirlooms, certain varieties were cross-pollinated in order to create new varieties with disease resistance and traits that would enable them to grow in a wide variety of climates. In other words, rather than allowing the plants to open pollinate, two different varieties were purposely crossed to create a plant with specific traits, a hybrid.

Figure 2. If you cross-pollinate two plants, each with a dominant favorable trait, the resulting fruit will bear both of those traits. Source: Kerry Soltis

These sorts of hybrids are a great blessing to farmers and gardeners who live in hot, humid, or very dry environments. They enable more people to grow their own food, decrease their pesticide usage, and live more sustainable lifestyles.
The one major downfall of these hybrids is that their seeds do not necessarily result in plants that are identical to the parent plant, so seeds cannot be saved.

Figure 3. This punnet square illustrates a cross between two hybrid plants. If you were to cross two heat tolerant, flavorful varieties, only half of the resulting plants would be identical to the parent plant. Source: Kerry Soltis

For a gardener or small farmer, growing certain hybrid varieties is not a bad thing, by any means. However, in the mid 1900s, the agriculture industry began taking hybridization to the next level by selecting for traits that would benefit their industry, and thus, their profits. Size, shelf life, high yields, and aesthetics quickly became the top priority for food production. Why not right? Who wouldn’t want large quantities of produce on grocery store shelves? It all sounds great until you realize what traits are compromised to get these varieties—mainly nutrition and taste. Researchers often refer to the decrease in nutrient content when high yielding plant varieties are developed as the Genetic Dilution Effect.

Studies have found that nutrient content in many of the nation’s main food crops have dramatically decreased over the last century. For example, the protein in wheat, barley, and corn has decreased by approximately 40% since the 1940s. The calcium in broccoli has decreased by more than 50%. Furthermore, since these hybrid plants produce high yields of larger fruits and vegetables, more nutrient rich fertilizers must be applied to support their growth, resulting in more nutritional losses. Raspberries, for example, when fertilized with large amounts of phosphates, will produce double the yield, yet their mineral content decreases by 20-30%. So essentially, our grocery stores are packed with an abundance of big, beautiful fruits and vegetables, but their nutritional value has never been lower. And don’t forget taste. Taste isn’t typically on the high priority list when it comes to creating hybrid varieties for mass production.

Figure 4. When plants are hybridized for mass production, aesthetics, yield, and shelf life are often selected for over nutrition and taste. Source: Kerry Soltis

Hopefully it’s starting to become apparent that when it comes to perfection, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. That home-grown tomato with a little brown spot is probably starting to become much more appealing than those “perfect” grocery store varieties that lack nutrition and flavor.

GMOs

The scary truth is that produce manipulation does not end with these tasteless hybrids. Here in the United States more genetically modified (GMOs) crops are being planted each year. These plants are created using biotechnology. Techniques such as, splicing, microinjection, viral carriers, and bacterial carriers create plant varieties that could never occur naturally. These methodologies give food scientists the ability to introduce favorable genes of completely unrelated species into food producing plants. Unfavorable genes can now also be silenced. Many of these food crops, particularly corn and soy, are ending up in common food products. These food products are not required to be labeled as containing GMOs, so there is no way to avoid them other than buying foods with an organic label.

Not only is this process unnatural, it also has the potential to be extremely dangerous to our health and the environment. A frequently used method for creating pest resistant plant varieties involves artificially inserting a toxin carrying gene from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, into plant DNA. The resulting plants then produce that toxin, which in turn will kill the larvae of their pests. It is currently unclear how this toxin affects humans. In a similar process, soy beans are genetically engineered so that they can tolerate high levels of pesticide application. As a result more toxic pesticides are being applied to these crops.

We shouldn’t be messing with Mother Nature though; she’ll always find a way around our ingenious ideas. Since the onset of this mass pesticide use, superweeds and superbugs have emerged that have adapted to the pesticides, so that they are in no way effected by them. Unfortunately these superweeds and superbugs have the potential to spread into our natural ecosystems and severely disrupt ecological balances.

Figure 5. DNA from a completely non-related organism is inserted into plant DNA so that it produces toxins, making the plant pest resistant. Source: Kerry Soltis

It’s all pretty scary stuff, especially when you consider that Monsanto, the major U.S. company behind all of this genetic engineering, has gone so far as to patent their genomic creations. Farmers who elect to plant GMO crops must sign an agreement that they will not save seeds. Even worse, as wind, insects, and birds spread the seeds and pollen of GMO crops, heirloom crops become contaminated with the GMO DNA. Heirloom farmers have no way of knowing that their crops have been contaminated until they plant the compromised seeds. Monsanto has such a stronghold on the industry that when this occurs the heirloom farmers are sued for infringement on patent laws rather than Monsanto being penalized for contaminating the crops of these farmers.

Consumers, gardeners, and local farmers hold the power when it comes to fighting back against food modification. If we change our perception of the perfect produce and begin selecting fruits and vegetables that are locally grown, nutritious, and flavorful, agriculture will have no choice but to respond accordingly. It’s Darwinism at the grocery store level. We get to decide what is fit to stock the shelves and what isn’t!

Further Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Scientists Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Doctors Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Celebrities Against GMOs
• How to Avoid GMOs

The Dervaes family grows more than 6,000 pounds of food a year, on 1/10 acre located just 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles.

With over 400 species of plants, 4,300 pounds of vegetable food, 900 chicken and 1,000 duck eggs, 25 lbs of honey, plus seasonal fruits throughout the year, they are able to produce  over 90% food they eat, and they sell food on their front porch making about $20,000 a year.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/NCmTJkZy0rM

Follow the Dervaes and their Urban Homesteading activites at http://urbanhomestead.org

LED light bulbs last longer, are very energy efficient, and produce beautiful light. The list as to why you should switch to LEDs goes on. But now, even indoor plant growers have a reason to switch.

A Purdue University study by Professor Carry Mitchel and doctorial student Celina Gomez shows that using LED lights instead of the conventional HPS lights (high pressure sodium) for growing tomatoes could give the same yields of fruit from the plants while using 25% of the energy the HPS lights use.

“It makes it really hard for the greenhouse industry to grow tomatoes well in the offseason. We’re trying to change that and make it affordable,” Mitchell said.

LEDs produce much less heat than HPS lights. This means that LED bulbs can be very close to the plant ,which offers certain benefits, “The leaves are photosynthesizing on the lower parts of the plants, and that may be helping with the plant’s energy,” Gómez said. “We’re getting the high intensity of the LEDs close to the plants because they’re not hot like a high-pressure sodium lamp. If you put one of those close to the plants, you’d scorch it.”

Mitchell states that the goal of their research is to bring down the prices of tomatoes to the point where local growers can compete with the cost of tomatoes that are shipped from faraway places. And they are as much a fan of very fresh healthy produce as we are. Cary Mitchell, a professor of horticulture, says,  “The average tomato is shipped about 1,500 miles from warmer climates where they’re grown to cooler climates that cannot produce the fruit cost-effectively in the winter. That journey is costly, however, because tomatoes are picked green and ripen during shipping, decreasing quality and flavor. The lengthy shipping distance also adds to the industry’s carbon footprint.”

So You Want to Build an Organic Vegetable Garden…

It’s easy enough to say you want to build an organic garden, but how does one actually get started? Before I get into my four beginning principals, let me say that these directions I’m writing are applicable to anywhere: backyards, smallholdings, allotments, farms. You can even apply them to containers you might only have space for on your apartment balcony. I’ve helped build and design gardens from small window sill pots to 200 acre properties. The elements are the same. Stick to the plan and you won’t go wrong.

Four Basic Produce Gardening Principles

There are four basic initial principles that I teach people to take into account  before they start any type of produce garden. They are pretty much the integral infrastructure in my method of food growing, something that can be reflected back on throughout the life of the garden at any stage. They are…

• Location
• Water
• Wind
• Land

They will and can make a huge difference to your garden. Not taking them into consideration before you start can cause you to pull your hair out. I’ve made mistakes in the past and have had to redo a few things because I just jumped in feet first. Just sit back. Relax. Look at your intended grow area and picture in your mind what you’d like to see there. Draw up a map of the area, the directions, where the water is, any major or influencing topography, and the general direction of the prevailing wind. If possible, I recommend doing this little ritual a few times over a few days so you really get a feel for the area and its personality over the different times of the day. Don’t bother drawing up a map every time, just breathe and get a feel for the place.

I’ve had people roll their eyes at me when I suggested that they “meditate” on their prospective vegetable gardens. Fair enough. It might not be something that everyone wants to do. But I cannot overstate the benefits of doing so. Part of my methodology of growing is establishing a connection to not only my food but to the land itself, a “re- connection” if you will. As new age or hippy as this may sound, it is an intrinsic truth inside all of us. We are part of the world and its system, just like ants, trees, rocks, or lakes. But for now, let’s concentrate on getting this thing up and running.

Location

Location is the first thing to look at when planning a garden of any kind. You need a somewhat open space that has a nice air flow and at least 6 hours of direct sunlight. Dappled light is fine as long as there is enough to promote growth in your plants over the course of the day. Stand in the middle of the area and relax. Listen to it—its sounds, its hum. Look at the differences in height of the surrounds. Take into account the shade of surrounding or nearby trees and their affect on the beds. How big are they? If you’re going to plant directly into the ground, you’ll have to accommodate for the trees’ water usage. A good size tree will take up to 200 litres from the ground on a daily basis. Here’s a good checklist to go through when surveying and planning your garden. Plus, is it close to your home? Is it a chore to walk the distance? What if it’s raining?

• How much (if any) shade does the area get?
• What times of the day does it (shade) occur?
• How much exposure is there on the beds from 11am to 3pm, the hottest hours?
• Are there any deciduous trees? Does winters loss of foliage make a difference between the amount of winter and summer sun?
• What shelter will those trees give with winter frosts or snow?
• Take into account the arcs of the higher sun in summer and the lower sun in winter and how much difference in sunlight there is between the two seasons.

Water

Water is the most important resource that we have on earth, because nothing can survive without it. Don’t forget that less than 5% of the Earth’s water is fresh water and much of that is unusable due to pollution. So using less is obviously a bonus, and creating a system that harvests a source for our own use without the reliance on utilities, big business, etc. is worth a major pat on the back. First, let’s consider the following before we get digging:

• How close is my main water source?
• Will I be using mains or a rain/tank water?
• What kind of water is it? Fresh, chlorinated, fluorinated etc?
• How am I going to get water to my garden?
• Will I be able to water in the early morning or later in the evening (the cooler parts of the day) to maximise water usage by plants?
• Will I need to install a gravity feed, dripline, or other water system?
• Will I need to buy a water tank?
• Could I build a dam or pond to catch water?
• Can I build multiple catchments to catch overflows?
• What about building swales, tree pans, or berms?

Wind

Wind direction is something that a lot of people either ignore or they just don’t think it matters when it comes to their gardens. Exposure to winds can dehydrate plants and soils, knock them over, create windfall fruit, or just blow soil and plants away. Diffused, it can also strengthen trees by encouraging trunk strength in order to adapt to the windy conditions. Wind is a part of the natural weather cycle, and it’s something that we can integrate into our system so that it works for us, not against us. The main mistake people make with a dominant wind is trying to “block” it when they should be trying to “diffuse” it. But first, what wind questions should you ask yourself when you’re planning a new garden?

• What direction does the prevailing wind come from?
• Take into account, hot northerlies and cooler southerlies.
• Wind across any body of water will cool, which is great for summer seating.
• What natural windbreaks exist on site?
• Will I be able to build or plant any windbreaks?

Land

Lay of the land was a huge consideration for me when I started my vegetable garden, mainly because the quarter of an acre that I’d chosen to grow on had flat patches, inclines, declines, dry bits, bits prone to flooding—the whole nine yards. I had to draw up an initial map of what I was dealing with and stand (literally) in that field for hours, watching where the sun shone, where it didn’t, what was sheltered, what had cover and how all the other elements interacted with it as a whole. This is probably the most important aspect of garden design as it will dictate the design you construct. Take your time, breathe, meditate on it, leave it if need be, then come back again.

The topography of any garden will dictate the type of bed system you grow: raised beds, no dig, containers, or directly into the soil. You can use any of these, but you might have to “tweak” them a little to fit in. Not everyone has a nice flat patch to grow on.

Below is a quick diagram of a typical backyard, illustrating the factors I’ve mentioned. This is actually a suburban job I recently built for a friend. There were big trees next door (on the west side), inclined ground towards the front (near the house). Basically everything came into play with it. We opted for an in-ground bed as the soil was great. After we’d tilled the area, we formed north –south rows with the pathways in between mulched to a level of around 75mm, pretty much like my own large vegetable garden at home.

{Editor’s note: 75mm is just shy of 3 inches. The author lives in Australia and therefore uses the metric system. Since the U.S. is one of two major countries in the world refusing to use the metrics system, we did not ask the author to change his measurements to the Imperial system. Here is a quick and easy conversation site if you need one. http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/millimeters-to-inches.htm}

In short, this was relatively easy and is applicable to most of the backyards I see. There were a few evergreen trees along the back fence that threw a bit of shade on the vegetable area during winter, but not enough to deter growth. It had a nice northerly pointing aspect. Water was close enough to only need a regular garden hose with watering. The east side had good sunlight from about lunchtime onwards so it would be good for fruit trees. The shed and trees along the neighbour’s fence line to the left resulted in dappled sunlight on the patch from about 3-4pm, so that would help reduce any burning effects.

We left a grass/play area for his kids and designated a composting area at the back fence as well.

The only unfortunate thing was that the vertical growing areas like the east side fence and shed wall weren’t really good for growing. They just didn’t get much sunlight at all. But rather than leave them empty, we tried a few climbing natives rather than fruiting plants. We’ll see how they go.

How to Build Your Own Garden Beds

Okay, so you’ve made a plan, decided on an area, sussed your water source, and you’re ready to get building. But, what kind of garden bed will you create? Let’s focus on the three greatest hits in the vegetable growing world. They are:

• Raised beds
• No dig beds
• In ground/direct planting beds

Each bed has its good points. The thing is to choose the best one for the area you have, your needs, your budget, and the look you’d like as well. On my farm, I’ve got raised beds, in ground beds, and no dig beds. I love having a variety. They all work great for me and are suited to their own particular areas. Let’s start.

Raised Garden Beds

Raised beds are often the easiest for people to build. You can use a range of products to build them and if your soil is pretty poor, you can just fill them with good stuff and off you go.

The main building blocks people use for construction are untreated sleepers (editor’s note: the author is referring to untreated wood planks or railroad ties) bricks, stacked stone/rock, or even corrugated metal that can be bought in pre fabricated garden bed forms, ready to fill and grow in. Though the metal ones are easy and aesthetically pleasing, a 3×1 metre bed will cost around $20-$300. In comparison, a sleeper version of the same would cost you around $150.

Let’s go through the basic construction of the most popular mediums.

Sleepers are the easiest in my opinion, I’ve built more sleeper beds than I can remember, and they look great. Most sleepers will come in lengths of either 2.4, 2.7 or 3 metres (meters in American English), if you can build with or join either of these without having to cut them, all the better. Most will be 200mm/20cm in width and will vary in thickness from 50-100mm. For a typical two sleep high bed, 50mm is perfectly fine.

Once you’ve decided on your beds, dimensions (let’s say two beds at 3 x1.2 metres) it’s easy, you’re basically going to be constructing boxes that will be filled with soil. If you’re using hard wood like red gum, you’ll need a good drill to pre drill holes for joining as you’ll struggle to get nails through them. If you’re using a softer wood like pine (untreated of course) you’ll be fine without one, though if you’re using wood screws (75mm) it is easier to pre drill your holes.

So for our bed the length is 3 metres, we’re going two sleepers high, in a nutshell we’ll need…

• X 4 3 metre by 50mm red gum sleepers
• X 2 2.4 metre by 50mm red gum sleepers
• A drill
• A pack of 75mm wood screws (you’ll use at least 25 in construction)
• X 4 100mm wood screws

We’re simply using the 3 metre lengths for the side and cutting the 2.4 metre ones in half to make our ends. Arrange the sleepers in their box shape first. Make sure it’s all ok and then start pre-drilling your holes. Three holes at the end of the 3 metre lengths, coming in 25mm from the end, will suffice. As we’re drilling into the grain on the 1.2 lengths, they won’t require drilling, make sure all your angles are flush and drill the two together. It helps to have a friend to help you out, and make sure you’re wearing your safety gear.

Now we can fit in the other pieces, and we’ll have created a big empty box. You could simply use this, just one sleeper high, but if you’re wanting to grow root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, I’d recommend going two high.

If you go two high, build the second level (empty box) the same way you did the first one, then “carefully” stack them on top of each other. To keep it all in place, simply drill a screw diagonally down at each corner, from the top down into the lower corresponding sleeper. See the diagram below. This screw will keep the sleeps in place. You will need to pre drill it and use 100mm screws.

Take into account the picture below, this bed is exactly what I’m talking about with my building description. Please use it as a visual reference and always double check your measurements before you cut or drill into them. If you don’t, you might be heading back to the store because you cut a sleeper in the wrong spot and created a big piece of firewood. Going on the length of sleepers available to you, you can dictate all kinds of lengths or widths. The main thing is to make sure you have the least possible wastage or leftover wood when you calculate it.

This is an example of a two sleeper high raised bed.

If you’re a confident brick layer, you can build a raised bed from bricks as well, I’ve done a few myself. They are pretty labour intensive, but in the right garden they look great. I’d still recommend going a good 400mm high and make sure you have the cash as you’ll need bricks, mortar, concrete for trench footings, and a brick bolster to cut your bricks in half.

To build something like this, I’d recommend either getting in a professional to do it for you or getting a few tips from a brick layer, watching a few brick laying how-to videos, and having a practice first. It’s easy after you’ve built a few, but if you’re only intending on building one, you want it to look right.

Besser blocks (concrete blocks) can be used in the same way, though the gaps inside them can be tricky. You can just fill them and plant perennial herbs in them like sage or thyme. Again, get a pro or do your research.

Now that you have your beds built, what do you fill them with? This simple question could have a hundred different answers. Different gardeners have their own preferred mixes of garden soils that they like to use. Some people add rock dust/minerals, others add coir (fiber extracted from coconut husks) and other fibrous things. These combinations work well for them, but for me, there’s a simple and easy equation to go by.

• 40% compost
• 30% manure (preferably cow)
• 30% soil

Now by soil I mean the regular old garden soil that you’ll find at your local garden centre. It will (should) have varied things in it already. That’s fine. Mix these three ingredients together the best you can and fill your raised beds with it. Allow it to settle by about 50-75mm in a two sleeper high bed over the next couple of weeks.

Don’t panic about getting the ratios exact. Do your best and it’ll be fine. You can plant directly into this mix. Typically it will be a neutral pH. You won’t need to add fertiliser, lime, sulphur, potash or anything else. This is its beauty, its simplicity. It’s ready to go, as is.

At the end of each season/year, you will have to top up your beds a bit and add back the goodies that your vegetables have taken out. You can use the same equation above, but use a smaller amount. Also, if you’re concerned about your pH at the end of the growing season, you can get an easy to use pH kit or take some soil (about half a cup) to your garden centre. They might test your pH for free.

But wait, how much soil do you actually get? We just need to calculate volume: length x width x depth. So for a 3 x 1 metre bed that is 400 mm deep, it would be 3 x 1 x .4. That gives us an answer of 1.2, which is 1.2 cubic metres of soil. Calculating it to the top of the bed ( the whole 400mm) allows for settling, which then will give you a lip on the edge of about 50mm. Perfect!

The simple diagram above shows what I mean in regards to leveling your beds, the shortest side (right) should be at least 400mm high to give a good depth to grow in with the other sides height adjusted accordingly to give a level ground for the beds surface, depending on the actual incline of slope. This is applicable to all bed types.

No Dig Garden Beds

No dig beds are pretty easy, and I have to admit a smug content-ness after I build one as I think they just look great. The order of events for building one is a basic layering of media, like a lasagna. Different people use different things, but I generally stick to the same recipe.

• First layer, (on grass or soil):  newspaper or cardboard, laid THICK at a good 30-50mm.
• Second layer: compost, mushroom compost.
• Third layer: grass clippings, soft prunings, leaves, or hay if you have none of these.
• Fourth layer: manure, well broken down (cow or sheep). Chicken is too acidic en masse like this.
• Fifth layer: lucerne (alfalfa), hay (without seed heads), pea straw, or sugar cane mulch (When using alfalfa be careful to avoid GMOs!).

This is the basic recipe for layering. You need to water each layer in really well as you go and in between each one you can add things like leaves or grass cuttings if you have them, but don’t go too thick with these, they’re just an addition.

With each layer, aim for a thickness of around 100mm, a bit less for the manure, a bit more for the lucerne etc. Once you get your bed to a good 50cm tall you can water it in again and leave to settle for a day or two before you begin planting, it will sink a bit so don’t be concerned if it looks shorter in stature the next day. Also with the actual dimensions of the bed, you can go as long as you like but try to keep the width to 1 metre max. This is so you can reach the other side of the bed when planting. Otherwise you’ll be going back and forth around the bed or stepping on it and compressing it down. Neither is good.

If you’re building directly onto grass, take into account the type of grass. Blade grass (like fescue) will die off easily under the first layer. Runner grass (like buffalo, couch, kikuyu) will do its best to get through and get into your lovely beds. Mow first on the lowest setting to really get off to good start and make sure the first layer on top of the grass is nice and thick. You can plant straight into your bed when you’ve finished, but I prefer to give it a few days to mingle. It’s up to you.

If the area has a slope, you can simply build up one side of the bed to have a level planting area. If you are building one on an incline (or decline, depending on your view), you might want to have the beds running down in line with the slope itself, rather than crossways or parallel to it. This is a bit of a catch 22 with rain. Crossways running beds, with light to medium rain, will act like swales and catch the water, which is great. But if your area is prone to heavy downfalls and flooding, the beds could become mud pits as the water has no direct route to run off. Think about your intended patch, your weather and take all facets into consideration.

What about amounts? How much stuff do you get to build a no dig bed?

For a 4x1x40-50mm bed, you’ll “roughly” need:

• 2/3 of a metre of manure
• 2/3 of a metre of compost
• 2-3 bails of hay/lucerne
• A good 15-20 newspapers or equivalent in cardboard
• Water, hose preferably
• Grass clippings, soft prunings, leaves, nothing “twiggy”

Don’t forget that you can make different garden bed shapes and patterns like circles, spirals. etc.

In Ground or Direct Planting Beds

In ground or direct planting beds mean just that, you’re planning on tilling the soil you have and planting straight into it.

The pro’s and con’s of this are pretty simple. It all depends on the type of soil you have and what’s on top of it, grass, weeds, etc. First, do a few test digs with your shovel at random points on the proposed area and have a look at what’s beneath. If you find that you’ve got a good upper topsoil layer (a good 20cm) you should be okay. If you find that you’re hitting clay, stones, or shale after digging an inch or two, you might want to consider a different option.

You can grow vegetables in heavily clayed soils, but they are a palaver. You’ll have to apply components like gypsum to help break it down and add extra soils to grow in. This is pretty labour intensive and isn’t the best way to go for smaller vegetable gardens.

If, on the other hand, you find that you have a good upper layer of topsoil, then you can till it with a rotary hoe/cultivator, break it up to a fine tilth, remove any weeds/grass/roots and get planting. But, even if your soil’s great, it’s always a good idea to add a bit of compost or manure while you’re cultivating it. Mix it in just to replenish the soil a bit.

The best way to calculate the amount of manure you’ll need is to calculate volume of the bed by 20mm deep. So, to work out the volume of the area, we need to times length by width by depth. So if you have a vegetable garden area of 100 m2, (a bed 10 metres by 10 metres, length and width) that means your calculation will be 10x10x.02, this gives us a total of 2 cubic metres. That’s the amount you’ll need to apply. Easy, eh?

Grass is another issue with this type of growing. Most commercial digs spray the entire area with herbicide, then till for planting. We’re not using harsh chemicals, of course, so we have two basic options.

• Till the area with grass and rake it out after
• Remove the grass first then till

The first is simple enough with blade grasses. Runner types make it a bit more difficult. If you have a friend who can use a rake, you’ll easily get through a typical 10×10 area in a day/. To achieve a fine tilt, till the area with a rotary hoe/cultivator a good 5-6 times. This is best done when the soil is damp but not muddy. Come across the field from two directions to achieve a crisscross effect. Then you just rake out the grass bits and their roots. But do make sure you get it all out. Running grass root systems generally have a few sub layers below ground. If you miss any, it will grow again and be a nuisance.

The second option requires digging down a good 50mm and completely removing the top layer, soil and all. This is easier on your back, as you can use machinery to do it, but take into account the soil you’ll lose. This type of bed would require double the amount of manure/compost to get it on track, i.e. 10x10x.04, 4 cubic metres.

Once you’ve tilled your bed, you’re ready to plant. You can either keep it as one big area for planting or dig out rows with paths in between so you’re not compressing the soil. Like no dig beds, rows can be easier if your area has an incline/decline to it as you can level each bed accordingly. A big area on a slope can be troublesome with water runoff.

If the soil is average in quality, you might need to spread a 50/50 compost/manure mix and turn it over into the soil itself. I would calculate the area to a depth of around 100mm. So a 10×10 metre area would be 10x10x.1, one cubic metre.

This was my first vegetable garden at my farm, a 5×5 metre, in-ground bed.

If that’s the case, you might want to go with a raised bed system, or else if you get a big downpour, most of your vegetables and that wonderful topsoil are simply going to wash away. This happened to me mid construction on one of my vegetable beds and it was heart breaking. I couldn’t do anything to stop it and I had to simply watch it wash away.

If you’re considering building your own vegetable garden, and I hope you are, then hopefully this article has shed some light on how to get started. It’s not that difficult, once you choose an area and get your materials together. You can then build and grow, literally!

Further Reading:

• Planning Your Organic Garden
• DIY Solutions for the Garden
• 5 Natural Pest Remedies for Your Garden
• Medicinal Herb Garden – What To Grow and How To Keep It Growing All Winter
• Ten Great Gardening Tips
• How to Make Your Own Compost Tea

A Beginner’s Guide to the Art of Organic DIY Composting

With “green” gardening becoming more and more popular, many gardeners are turning toward making their own organic compost for a number of reasons, from low cost (relative to store-bought versions) to reducing landfill waste, to simply benefiting from the high quality and mineral and nutrient rich nature of organic, homemade compost.

Greens + Browns + Oxygen + Water = Healthier Plants!

While reasonably easy to learn, there are a few tricks of the trade to ensure that your organic compost is mixed and aerated properly, that it stays at the right temperature, and that it will provide all the wonderful benefits it should.

Choosing a Bin

Compost bins come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and materials. Prices vary from practically nothing to upwards of $150.

Homemade bins can be created out of a number of recycled materials such as scrap wood, cinderblocks, wire mesh, bricks, or a combination of each. Regardless of the materials used to build the bin, it is important that the unit is constructed to withstand the weight of the composting materials and to maintain the proper composting temperature (140-160 degrees Fahrenheit) when it is full.  Additionally, it must withstand the elements and intrusion by wild animals while allowing proper drainage and air-flow.  And, of course, it should fit your needs and the space allotted.

Store bought bins are generally (though not always) plastic, durable, and lightweight. They come in any number of colors, shapes and sizes.  Features vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but often include built-in lids with venting holes for aeration and drainage, trays for sifting the different materials, and access doors for removing material ready for application.  Some even allow for “tumbling” the material, a practice that allows for more effective aeration or separating the material relative to when it was placed in the bin.  Depending on your budget and need, there are myriad commercial composting bins for indoors and out available at your nearest home and garden retailer.

Creating the Perfect Organic Compost: The Compost Equation

The goal of every composter should be to produce the richest, most nutritious and viably useful organic compost possible.  The materials you will be contributing to your compost bin, from household kitchen scraps and refuse to lawn clippings and leaves, will eventually break down.  Therefore, you will always be producing usable compost, though the time-frame will depend on your methodology.

Since compost becomes compost as microorganisms (bacteria known as actinomycetes and fungi) feed upon the materials in your bin, these pathogens require a few basics in order to do what Mother Nature intended them to do.  Therefore, it is important to have an understanding of what is going in your bin and when, as the effectiveness of the compost and how fast it will be usable is reliant on a balance between the “green” and “brown” materials introduced.

In short, for every pound or so of “green” nitrogen material you put in to the bin like coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable peelings, and grass clippings, you will want to include a pound of “brown” carbon-rich material like straw or dead leaves. Too much of either material can slow down the decomposing process and/or lead to unpleasant smells.

Oxygen and moisture are essential for the microorganisms to keep functioning aerobically.  Too little moisture in the bin will lead to a pile of dried-out, crispy matter as opposed to rich and slightly dampened material. Too much moisture will drown the microorganisms, depriving them of the oxygen necessary for life. Turn your compost once or twice a month with a pitchfork, shovel, or aerating tool and add a little water if needed. Proper aeration can result in rich, moist compost ready to use in a few weeks rather than a few months.

To Compost or Not to Compost?—That is the Question

Now that some of the basics of composting have been outlined, it is important to develop an understanding of just exactly what sort of items you can put into the compost bin and why.

Remember: for creating organic compost it is generally preferable to only include those items that are themselves organic or organically grown!

The following is a short list of materials that are suitable for composting and commonly found around the house:

Nitrogens:

• Coffee grounds
• Banana peels (chop them up for quicker break down)
• Flowers (but only if they are green and not dried)
• Vegetable and fruit peels (chop them up for quicker break down; do not use lime peels, as they can abruptly and detrimentally increase the pH levels of the material leading to the death of the beneficial organisms)
• Pet food (preferably not meat-based)
• Lawn clippings (again, only if they are green)

Carbons:

• Leaves (chop them up for quicker break down)
• Dried grass clippings
• Hedge clippings (chop them up for quicker break down)
• Dried corn stalks and cobs (chop them up for quicker break down)
• Pine needles
• Saw dust and wood shavings (but only from wood that has not been chemically treated)
• Peat moss
• Nut shells/peanut hulls
• Tea leaves

The following is a short list of unsuitable items for the compost bin:

• Ashes from the barbeque (charcoal)
• Dog and cat feces (may contain disease organisms so avoid at all costs!  If one chooses to use manure only use material from organically raised animals like cows, goats, horses, etc.  with ratios of 16-18:1)
• Meat, bones, fat, grease, oils (will not break down and will attract unwanted animal visitors)
• Lime
• Non-white/colored/dyed paper
• Toxic materials (household cleaners or water with cleaners added)
• Any materials that are not biodegradable

Upon following these very basic guidelines the DIY gardener will soon have what master gardeners have long considered the “bee’s knees” for their beds, lawns and gardens.  Use this homemade, nutrient-rich organic compost as a soil amendment, fertilizer, or mulch and watch your vegetables, flowers, and other plants flourish like never before, all while lessening waste in the home.

Happy gardening!

 

Visualize yourself totally stoked about gardening. In this picture you are getting some garden beds or containers ready for planting. Maybe your schedule lightened up and you found yourself with a free day to garden – to plant seeds. The cool of the morning ignited your enthusiasm and in just two or three hours you made the soil look gorgeous, fertile. “Wow,” you say. “Any seed will thrive in that soil.”

But wait! Before you throw those dry seeds from the packet into the dirt, please know this.

Seeds are miniature storehouses of information. Not only do they know how to produce a plant, they know how to protect themselves from the harsh conditions in nature. Seeds are encoded with inhibitors, a defense mechanism that gives them the ability to survive, to withstand overly wet or dry conditions, extreme temperatures, and, if eaten, to survive the acid filled digestive tract of an animal. Soaking seeds for 8 to 16 hours before planting leaches away these inhibitors; soaked seeds germinate at a much quicker rate.

Although you’re excited about weeding the earth and preparing the soil, (woo hoo – pat yourself on the back!) go ahead and pause. The soil will wait while the information rich seeds soak in warm water in preparation for planting.

If you have soaked seeds before, you may realize that wet seeds are more challenging to work with than the dry ones out of the packet. After soaking, rinse the seeds, drain the excess water, and then put them on a rag or washcloth. It’s also wise to keep a dry rag or cloth nearby when planting to wipe your hands on – the entire planting process goes more smoothly when you keep your fingers dry.

Happy Planting!

May your harvest be nutritious and delicious!