Last year was my first attempt to organically grow a garden. I had minimal sucess. This year I want much better sucess and the key this year will be space. Last year I placed veggies that probably needed alot more room to grow in containers, so I had tiny veggies. This year I want to do a raised bed garden. Last year I only used soil, peat moss and tea and coffee grinds. I don't consider manure to be organic, my personal belief, but I want it completely organic and able to feed myself and my daughter. I probably will have to order enough soil since buying it probably won't do. Anyone else thinking about gardening organically? How are you going to do it? Are you going to use kitchen scraps, coffee grinds etc? What are you going to plant?

I do organic garden though I'm a firm believer in composted manure and wish I had a chicken coop for that very reason! That and the eggs. But I also compost my kitchen scraps, grass and leaves as well. I'm still figuring out the correct amounts with that. My garden, last year, did pretty well. It was a new spot for us and it hadn't been used as a garden in many years. We're expanding this year! I need to sit down and draw up my plan.

what kind of scraps worked? Do you know about organic pest controls? I tried a recipe to make a garlic/pepper spray and it almost killed all of my plants.

For composting -- I just use my breads, fruits and veggies. No meat products. No dairy products. No grease. I use newspaper in between my rows and this helps with a couple of things. 1. Keeps weeds down. 2. Retains water in the garden. 3. It adds to the soil the next year. I also add my tea bags to my soil and egg shells. I get coffee gorunds from Starbucks now and then -- we don't drink coffee and I'm not willing to take it up for gardening! Though I did briefly consider it!

Regarding pest control (knock on wood) I haven't had horrible problems. I did have a tree last year that had some bugs but I was able to cut that part of the tree off and use a spray bottle with water and dish soap. I also took every ladybug I could find and moved them over to that tree. But I will need to keep an eye on that tree a bit better this year. I had a baby in June and got a bit behind on a few things.

I have a book that has other pest control that is pretty good. Let me see if I can hunt it down. Also, my favorite gardening site and I always recommend it, is You Grow Girl™ - Gardening for the People -- she is a container gardener for the most part but she has lots of great information and she is pruely organic.

Now, if you don't mind me asking, why don't you care to use composted manure to be organic?

I just started a compost pile 3 months ago and it's looking good...
I'm using kitchen scraps (like melsb said, no grease, meat or dairy), horse and chicken manure and I'm hoping, as soon as my gras grows I can finally add some green stuff to it.

I bought some blood meal (sp?) to fertilize my plants. It seems to be working good, the only problem is now I have to keep my dogs out of my plants...

I'm also curious about why you don't consider manure organic?

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Can I put egg shells in my compost pail?

As for pests, last summer I made up this brew - it contained garlic, eggs, and some other things (I'll have to find the recipe again). It worked as well as LIQUID FENCE (which is very good, but expensive). I had to let the mixture sit for 3 days, then sprinkled it around the garden (not on the plants). It kept the pesky rabbits and the neighbors cats out all summer. I had to hold my nose while applying it, but the smell went away. Except, every time I watered the garden, I'd get a faint whiff of it.

I don't know what this says about my cooking, but when I was applying it, my 6 year old son was standing over the pail, sniffing it. I asked if he liked that smell, and he said, "yes, it smells like the chicken you make!"

I've been looking up things today, appearing there are 'green manure' options. I just can't use animal manure, just for me personally. My mother grew an organic garden when we were kids. She didn't know it was organic but she used no pesticides, no manure, she just prayed over her garden, and I prefer it that way. Green manure can be buckwheat, wheat, winter wheat, peas etc. These are plants that you grow to fertilize your crops. But, I'm still looking into maybe a dry green manure like adding dry ground buckwheat to store bought soil. I know coffee and tea grinds added nitrogen naturally, so I wonder...

I worked really hard yesterday...making my garden so I can add scraps to the soil before planting season. See, I dug out last year a square but would have to blast it with chemicals to kill the slugs and fire ants that were in the soil, so instead I planted in containers with some minimal success. This year I decided to make a raised container garden so they could grow better. Well, it didn't take long to make it. I actually used what I already had...I took four landscaping logs and put them into a square, I took some bricks and laid it inside the square on the ground, then I took some scrap wood that I had and laid it on top, I also used Lea's old chalkboard and laid it on there, then I took a tarp and an old blanket and laid it on top of that, then I started spreading out the two bags of soil I had from last year-(its naturally organic soil I buy with no manure, pesticides etc.). Then I took all of my pots from last years garden which I left outside all winter on the ground and on the back porch, many had worms in them, and we dumped it, with leaves mixed in and filled in the rest to create our base. I had bought some seeds at the dollar store that I'm gonna start indoors in the next few days and I also bought a little garbage pail that is table top to use as my kitchen composter. So now I can throw the scraps in there then mix them into the soil outside. There gonna start having great deals at the local hardware store with 40 lb bags of organic soil for like $1.99 so I'll watch for those sales during the next few weeks and will start adding my scraps and turning it.

I'm sore but I did it and now I have a raised garden, because its actually in a squared out area you wouldn't know that its not actually sitting on the ground but on bricks and wood...and a chalkboard-lol. Here's some pictures of it...

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Sounds like you were busy yesterday.

If you continue having problems with the slugs this year try putting out a little beer for them. They love it and end up falling in and drowning.

Fire ants have never been a problem for me -- I'm not even sure if we have them in this area.

I second the beer thing for slugs - just get a shallow dish or something (I like those little tupperware things that are too small for anything, I think they are for sandwiches, but I can't ever fit bread in there). Just put them in the soil so it's like a little "inground pool" and put beer in. The yeast in the beer draws the slugs to it, they crawl in, and then can't get out.

For green manures, remember you can't grow a crop of veg or what not when growing the green manure. You need to grow it, let it establish, then till under, and let decompose.

Another thing would find a university extension that does free or low cost soil testing - even though you purchased the soil, over time you'll want to test to see what nutrients have been used up in it. Nitrogen is not the only nutrient needed - potassium and phosphorus are also important, as well as soil pH.

Folks like using composted manure because not only are necessary nutrients in it, they are "readily available". Some alternate forms of the nutrients are slower to be taken up by the plants, and take much longer to be utilized, meaning the plant may need the nutrient, and the nutrient is there, but the plant can't use it in it's form at that time.

A Guide to Organic Fertilizers

That's a pretty easy to understand link for different fertilizer necessities, especially the N/P/K stuff. You're veggies were probably small from lack of nutrients, not container size, heck, look at hydroponic tomatoes at the store - those don't even USE soil (and they taste like crap)! Since I grew up on a horse farm, we composted all the manure. Mom would "garden" by using the tractor to spread out some of the older composted manure into a 20'x20' "plot", and then would take all her seeds and throw them over the plot. Whatever grew, grew. We had to watch out because once something started, it would take off, and we'd need to check the veggies daily. Once, a zucchini escaped detection, and when found, was about 3 1/2" long and about 6" diameter. The dang thing weighed about 20lbs!

Not all dirt is created equal! :D

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