organic vegetable
gardening tips and books for novices and even experts
There are a
few things to keep in mind when starting a vegetable garden. The first
thing is to prepare the soil. Most vegetables love good soil and most
good 'soil' - which I put in inverted commas, as in the garden we use
both the soil and organic material like compost which has not yet
become soil but which improves the soil, which probably will confuse
the novice and not suffice the expert - is made up loads of organic
matter (composted grass, animal manures, sugar cane mulch, worm
castings (worm poo), rotted down leaves and the such). So, again, to be
technical this organic matter is not actually 'the' soil, so you could
say that most good gardens rely on a good layer of organic matter and
if you have good soil then that's a bonus.
In general
you should start preparing your vegetable garden a few months in
advance, and you should start fairly small: maybe about 5x5 meters or
the size of a small room. In that area it would be advisable to add a
combination of the following: 4 bails of sugarcane mulch, a bale of
lucerne hay, a bale of pea straw, 3 bags of horse/ sheep manure, 5
kilograms of pelletted chicken manure, 10 kilograms of cow manure, 2
kilograms of blood and bone, 5 kilograms of mushroom compost and
whatever well broken down compost you can lay your hands on. I used to
suggest adding some garden lime, but I've since read Linda Woodrow's
book called Permaculture Backyard (1996)available mail order through Green Harvest Seeds Maleny (go to my index
for a link to them). Woodrow's book suggests not adding lime or
dolomite as the animal manure will raise the PH (to do with acidity and
alkaline 'soils') of your garden more slowly than lime and dolomite
without having a major impact on micro-organisms in the 'soil' which
don't like rapid change - Linda Woodrow's had a book published and I
haven't so her advice is probably - actually more than likely - better
than mine. In other words go buy her book ( I don't get any commission
for saying that, it's just the best book I've ever read for backyard
organic/ permaculture enthusiasts and I'm too lazy to update all the
information on my site to keep up with such fine gardening exposition.
Anyway, you may not be able to get all of this manure fresh, but you
can buy it from garden shops. But why waste - yes waste - that much
money on gardening products. Read further for more ideas...
Gathering
your ingredients: Get your horse manure from racing stables. I live in
Brisbane near many stables and there are heaps who will give bags of
horse poo away for free as long as you bring their bags back (for some
reason more comes out of the back of a horse than goes in the front so
they need lots of bags). The horse poo is normally very fresh so it
does require a few months of either sitting around in a compost or
being eaten by worms and microbes before it is suitable for growing
vegies. The horse poo is also normally mixed with sawdust which takes a
long time to break down - though, conveniently this process is helped
by the masses of nitrogen in the poo (carbon from sawdust, nitrogen
from poo = scientific process of molecules and atoms and DNA or
something, all mixing up and I don't really know what I am talking
about, but it's good). If you can't get all the other manures and
things listed above, just substitute e.g. straw for sugarcane mulch,
mushroom compost instead of the horse manure, pelletted lucerne instead
of the bale. What you are aiming for is a mixture, ideally, of two or
three different animal manures, compost and a few bails of organic
stuff like sugarcane mulch or lucerne(at least 3 over that area) which
will break down fairly easily - as well as the blood and bone and
seaweed fertiliser. If you follow the 'recipe' however, you should end
up with a thick rich layer of good 'soil', of about 10 centimeters in
depth, in which to plant, probably in 1 to 2 months in subtropical
areas, perhaps longer in cooler zones. You might also want to give the
whole mixture an initial watering with a seaweed fertiliser, and should
maintain a little bit of moisture on the patch when no rain occurs.
This recipe probably leaves your garden high in nitrogen so initially
leafy things like lettuce and silverbeet, might be your first crops,
tomatoes, corn and pumpkins should also be okay. Once the nitrogen
depletes things that fruit (including tomatoes) like capsicums,
zucchini, cucumbers, might be you next step, followed by crops of
legumes such as peas, beans, pigeon peas etc. Legumes are good as they
don't normally require much nitrogen and can also add nitrogen to the
soil.
Getting
back to getting this stuff for FREE (or cheaper)... Think about growing
your own sugarcane (I got some purple stuff from Greenpatch Organic
seeds - link on my indexpage
or lemon grass or the very similar citronella grass (which are good
weed barriers and can be frequently cut in warm weather for mulch and
composts). Also grow you own lucerne: lucerne is quite drought tolerant
and is also a legume so it is has the ability to draw nitrogen from the
air and put it in the soil (again scientific stuff I don't understand,
but free nitrogen is better than expensive water soluble chemical
nitrogen that you have to buy all the time isn't it?). If you are in a
cold area you can try lupins which are also legumes and sort of pretty
if you like that sort of thing. If you are Australian you also probably
have a lawn, or neighbours with a lawn, and those lawn clippings are
rich in nitrogen so you can add them to a compost (explained a bit
further on) with dry hay, leaves and 'sticky' things like slashed
lantana, as well your animal manure - for later use. You could also
invest in chickens, Woodrow's Permaculture Backyard has a
good design for a chook tractor that can fit in you backyard and move
around to different parts of the garden. The chooks provide nitrogen
and phosphorous in the form of poo as well as eating unwanted bugs (and
probably some wanted ones as well) as well as eating weed seeds and
digging over your garden bed or compost for you) whilst providing you
with eggs and munching on your left over food scraps and the bits of
toast your kids won't eat.
I won't say much about compost, but in brief: (apart from getting Permaculture Backyard or other good organic gardening book, such as Esther's No Dig Garden, or a bio-dynamic compost book some of which are available through Eden Seeds or Greenpatch Organic Seeds - links at index)
You should layer your compost in a big heap, one layer of grass/weeding
clippings, one layer of dry hay/ sugarcane mulch, one layer of 'sticky
things' like thin prunings from trees (I also use dry palm fronds as I
get piles and piles of the darn things), a layer of mixed animal
manure, and then go back to the first layer and stack them in order
again. If it works you'll find within 24 hours it has heated up. If you
can't get it to work dump it in the garden and let the worms eat it
(sticks are probably not good for this method) or get the chickens onto
it (I'd still remove sticks and also the animal manure if you go down
this path). You will also need to turn the heap over in a few weeks and
keep it moist. See below for more money saving ideas...
more tips on individual plants and techniques, as well as my website:
old vegetable patch
Another way to save money is to save your own seed. Michel and Jude Fanton have written a good book about this called The Seed Savers' Handbook (pictured below). Link at index. After first buying your seed from a good reliable, non-hybrid seed company (or from old gardeners) listed at: My Australian Seed Seller Page
You can
save the seed (easily) of many vegies especially pumpkins, beans,
lettuce and basil. I've listed many ways of doing this of doing this an
advice on growing different vegies on my site.. again, perhaps start at
the index. For more advice
buy the Seed Saver's book from the Seed Saver's Network, or Eden Seeds
or some of the others listed at, you guessed it, the index, or the seed companies page.
There are many other great gardening books, for the more advanced you might try the Permaculture Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison, and for general information on vegetables you might try getting a hold of Vegetables by Phillips and Rix.
