Best Organic Gardening Secrets

Peak Moment 147: In Colorado it’s cold for much of the year, but inside this cozy dome greenhouse, the plants are growing happily. Take a grand tour with Buckhorn Gardens manager and permaculturist Breigh Peterson: the greenhouse structure with its interplay of light and water, warmth and air; curving raised beds of vegetables and flowers; fish tanks moderating the temperature; vertical trellises and shelves to use vertical space. Outdoors a huge garden of row crops and a young orchard are complemented by free-roaming chickens and ducks. http://buckhorngardens.blogspot.com

Duration : 0:28:0

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Sprout, the student-run organic garden, provides fresh vegetables for the dining hall at Connecticut College. Sprout is dedicated to encouraging sustainable living on campus.

Duration : 0:1:4

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I’m proud to present a preview of Master (Organic) Gardner Lee O’Hara’s organic gardening Made Easy DVD. While I usually spotlight organic pioneers in Texas, I realize not all the viewers live in Texas. Lee O’Hara is an organic gardener in California who has done what I dream of one day accomplishing- turning his yard into an organic vegetable garden which produces 80% to 85% of his food. Lee accomplishes this without chemical pesticides and herbicides.

I own The Organic Tomato and his Organic Gardening Made Easy DVDs and I highly recommend’em both. Lee steps you through the process of how to get started with simple directions that even *I* can follow.

This video is already posted on YouTube, but I wanted to highlight here to help spread the word about how important it is people learn how to grow their own food & feed their family healthily. This video is used with permission and I receive no money / commission for plugging it. I really enjoyed’em both and hope you pick up a copy at Lee’s website: http://www.organichomegardener.com/

About Lee

Our home is on a small hillside lot at the northeast edge of Los Angeles, between Glendale and Pasadena. We probably have one of the best climates in the US for gardening, but we do have our handicaps. Topsoil is rare. Its been scraped away for homes and buildings. We get virtually no rain from about mid-April through about mid-October or November.

We have June Gloom every year, starting about mid-May, and continuing sometime until the 1st or 2nd week in July. During much of that period, well get 2-3 hours of afternoon sun, with the rest of the day being foggy and over-cast.

Over the past 24 years Ive turned our front and back yards into raised planting beds. At first it was just with the intention of creating retaining walls, but soon escalated into growing vegetables organically. The term Organic, in farming or gardening, means using fertilizers and pest controls that come only from plants and animals.

One of my original actions was to keep records and statistics on what I did, and what the results were at the end of the season. I wanted to know exactly how effective my new methods were. The results were so consistent year after year, and more or less incomparable according to everything I could find about what one can expect from any given vegetable plant. Year after year I was getting 20-30 lbs. of foot long burpless cucumbers per seed, 30 lbs. of yellow zucchinis per seed, ¾ lbs. of green beans per seed, 100+ Japanese eggplants per plant, 40-50 bell peppers per plant, 30 lbs. of leaf lettuce from a planting bed of 15 sq. ft., etc.

As I comment on in the film, organic gardening Made Easy, we give away more than half of what I grow. The truth is that its more like 80-85%. After a few years, the habit of weighing and counting everything became boring. I stopped weighing and counting everything, unless I was trying something new. As in the case of last year when for the first time I planted two sweet potatoes Id bought at the supermarket. I can tell you that four and a half months later when I dug them up I had 20 lbs. of them, with the biggest sweet potato weighing in at 3.25 lbs. But I didnt quit keeping daily yield statistics in the case of my tomatoes!

For instance, the 7 Beefmaster tomato plants currently still growing on October 29 October, a few inches high on April 15th when I planted them in their 20′ by 4′ garden bed - produced 805 lbs. of “amazing” tomatoes between July 12th and October 20th. As they dont still have the full rich flavor they had in mid-summer, I quit counting with maybe another 20-30 lbs. still ripening on the vines. My wife protests that, saying that theyre still 10 times better than anyone can buy.

Be that as it may, having had to do without a decent tomato for many years, my standards for tomatoes are very high. I dont count or weigh anything Im not willing to confess that I grew.

The full statistics on the 2007 tomato crop were:

1) From an eighty square foot raised bed (20′ x 4′)

2) 7 tomato plants

3) 805 lbs. of tomatoes harvested

4) An average of 115 lbs. of tomatoes per plant

5) The total number of tomatoes; 1,386, or 198 per plant

6) The average weight per tomato; 9.3 ounces

7) The largest tomatoes: Several at 2.25 lbs each

While I may be a world-class braggart, the point I want to make is that anyone can do it. If tomatoes dont do well in your particular climate, vegetables that do well in your climate will do immensely better with the kind of gardening practices youre starting to read about.

-Lee O’Hara

Duration : 0:3:58

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the organic tomato 2 min

Duration : 0:2:8

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A simple idea led two women into a thriving new farming enterprise. Build backyard mini-farms for homeowners who want to start growing their own fresh herbs and vegetables lasting throughout most of the year. Recipes from this episode: Kale Philo Bake and Crookneck Squash and Tomato Slices. Links to these recipes are below.

For more stories:
http://cookingupastory.com

For the Kale Philo Bake recipe:
http://cookingupastory.com/recipes/kale-philo-bake/

For Crookneck Squash and Tomato Slices recipe: http://cookingupastory.com/recipes/crookneck-squash-and-tomato-slices/

Duration : 0:5:33

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If you’re looking for some natural dog food recipes or homemade dog food, this recipe from the Natural Pet Food Cookbook is a great start.

Chef Jason Hill of Chef Tips puts Bandit’s Beef Stew to the test, and this dog food recipe was approved with enthusiasm by his family’s Shih Tzu puppy, Sugar.

This recipe can be prepared as an organic dog food with the right ingredients. Just choose canned organic vegetables when preparing this meal. It’s also a human grade dog food, as Chef Jason Hill attests — and not bad, either!

Using natural organic dog food ingredients, this special treat makes a great alternative to dry dog food such as Nutro Dog Food, Innova Dog Food, Canidae Dog Food and Pedigree Dog Food.

It’s a gourmet dog food your pet will enjoy time and time again.

Bone Appetit!

Duration : 0:2:6

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This video is part of Kitchen Gardeners International’s “Eat the View” campaign to convert part of the White House lawn into an edible landscape. It features KGI founder, Roger Doiron, digging a new garden on his “white house” lawn.

Duration : 0:4:52

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Technorati Tags: agriculture, climate change, food, garden, gardening, mccain, obama, organic, security, white house

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Click link above to get your FREE $500 Dollar Home Depot Gift Card! You can use it to buy supplies!

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Organic pest control begins with healthy soil. It produces healthy plants, which are better able to withstand disease and insect damage.
2. Organic fertilizers are safer than chemicals. Chemical fertilizers may, in time, build up salts.
3. Apply compost to your garden about two to four weeks before you plant, giving the compost time to integrate and stabilize within the soil.
4. Do not over-fertilize garlic or it will become leafy. Use a high phosphorus fertilizer (the middle number) to promote bulb formation.
5. New beds need soil amendments and double digging for that extra starting kick.
6. Soak finished compost in water to “brew” compost “tea,” a nutrient-rich liquid that can be used for foliar feeding or for watering plants in your garden, backyard, or houseplants.
7. Specimen plants which need a warmer climate zone than you have do well in sheltered, south-facing walls. The wall acts as a solar collector, absorbing heat during the day and releasing it at night, creating a small zone that is warmer than the rest of the garden.
8. Begin deep watering your trees and shrubs in the spring if you don’t get a soaking rain every 10 - 14 days.
9. When planting trees, don’t give them too much organic matter in the hole they’re going in. If the hole is filled with rich organic matter and compost but the surrounding soil is hard and compact or less nutritious, the roots are less likely to spread out into the soil. When the tree isn’t anchored well by large roots, it is more likely to be blown over and be less healthy and less able to resist drought.
10. Outdoors potted plants and baskets are the only plants that need daily water on the hottest, driest days of the summer.
11. Once a seed sprouts it must be kept watered. If it dries out, it dies. If seeds are lightly covered with soil, they may need to be gently sprinkled with water once or twice a day to keep them moist.
12. When planting in clay soil, cover seeds with vermiculite instead of clay. Clay absorbs heat and may bake the seeds and stop germination. Clay also forms a top crust, forming a barrier for the young seedlings.
13. Trees and bushes placed carefully in the middle of flower beds add height and variety to the entire landscape.
14. Low-growing ornamental grasses can cascade over walls, edge low borders, and taller varieties can stand in for a row of shrubs.
15. A small extension curtain rod is an excellent support rod for plants. The length can continually be adjusted without disturbing the plants.
16. Native trees are low maintenance; they have developed natural defenses against insects and disease over the centuries, and they rarely need pruning or feeding.
17. Throw a handful of finished compost in the hole for a flower or vegetable transplant before transplanting. The compost gives the transplant a bit of an extra boost that lasts throughout the season.
18. Check moisture in container plants often with your fingers. Potting soil is often lightweight and dries out quickly.
19. Short on space but like vining vegetables? Train your squash, melons, and cucumbers onto a vertical trellis. Support the fruiting vines gently and thoroughly.
20. Watering is necessary when transplanting, but be careful not to over water.
21. Water your gardens and plants in the early morning or dusk to save water. Watering during the heat of the day burns plants and increases evaporation and loss of water.
22. Picking off flowers frequently encourage most annuals to flower more abundantly.
23. To continue blooming, container plants need large amounts of nutrients and water. Since water tends to wash out the nutrients, use finished compost or a good organic fertilizer as top-dressing.
24. Whenever possible use natural and organic fertilizers such as compost. Chemicals build up toxicity in soil, which leaches into drinking water.
25. Botanical insecticides are plant derivatives, and can be more toxic than some synthetics. They are, however, better in the long run because they break down rapidly and do not accumulate in the food chain as synthetics do.

Duration : 0:3:15

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Rydal Community Vegetable Garden is a small, voluntary scheme set up in the original walled garden of Rydal Hall, in the English Lake District. The garden had been disused and overgrown for many years. In 2005 work began to clear it, landscape it, and return the garden to productivity. The idea has been to create a working vegetable garden, which is maintained by volunteers, who in return benefit from sharing ideas and harvesting seasonal, local, organic produce. This has created an additional feature amongst Rydal Hall’s own, recently restored gardens, which can be visited by all as a place to see, learn and relax.

The Vegetable Garden has a small Visitors Centre, accessible paths and information signs. It is organised into roughly defined areas. These include a large, traditional Greenhouse and a Poly-tunnel, which are used to establish younger plants and also house warmth loving species including Vines, Figs and Tomatoes. There is an Orchard with many lesser-known varieties of tree, which is also where the Chickens and Bee Hives are found. There is a Sensory Garden at the top end of the hill, which is planted with Herbs and has seating and views across the whole garden and out to the hills beyond. And the rest of the garden is a terraced mixture of Fruit, Vegetables and Flowers, including Strawberries, Pears, Beans, Courgettes, Potatoes, Lettuce and many, many more.

These films are a monthly journey through both the progress made and the changes seen in the garden, the seasons and the local area, during 2007.

Duration : 0:7:10

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Technorati Tags: community, District, earth, eating, food, garden, healthy, Lake, learning, Local, Nature, organic, Place, Produce, Rydal, vegetable