Organic Gardening How To Blog

It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional gardener or a novice at it, it’s always good to have some expert help in raising an organic vegetable garden. Now, there is some super new online software that will provide you that expert help. It’s called EZGarden.

EZGarden will walk you through the entire process. It will help you design, plant, tend, and harvest your organic vegetable garden.

The software is designed to help anyone to be successful at gardening, no matter where you live. To begin with, EZGarden will ask you to provide the zip code for your gardening area. EZGarden goes out and retrieves valuable data concerning your soil type and climatic conditions.

Based on other information that EZGarden will ask you, EZGarden will help you to decide what to plant and when to do it. It will provide you information on how deep to plant and what the spacing should be. EZGarden will even make suggestions on companion planting and crop rotations.

Once your organic vegetable garden is planted, EZGarden will provide you a weekly task list on things that should be done in your garden. You can even ask EZGarden to send you this weekly task list in a separate email.

Watch this video for some more info on EZGarden:

Pretty cool software, isn’t it!

Give EZGarden a try. It certainly makes growing an organic vegetable garden a whole lot easier!

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Fall is quickly coming and our summer crops are coming to an end. In this organic gardening how to, I want to show you some secrets on saving seeds. Seeds harvested from your own garden will produce stronger and more bountiful crops the next time you plant them.

Saving seeds is easy and here’s what you need to do:

1. Wait until the seeds are ready. Sometimes this is the most difficult thing to do. But, your garden will produce seeds when the plants are ready to produce seeds – in their own good time and not necessarily when you want them to.

2. Collect the seeds. When your plants have produced seeds, you need to wait until the seeds have matured before you collect them. You can tell that the seeds or seed pods have matured when the plant starts to turn brown or when the seed pods start to open up . At that point, collect the seeds and place them in a brown paper bag.

3. Let the seeds dry. Place the seeds that have been collected in brown paper bags in a dry, airy location. Lightly shake the bags every 1-2 days so that all sides of the seeds are getting properly dried.

4. Separate and clean your seeds. Find a shallow container that is 1-2 inches deep and line the inside of this container with dry paper towels. Take a strainer that will barely allow the seeds to pass through it and place the contents of the paper bag in this strainer. Gently shake the strainer over your shallow container and watch the seeds fall through.

5. Label and store the seeds. Without touching the seeds, place the seeds that you’ve collected into a jar or seal-able plastic bag. Seal the jar or plastic bag and label them. Label them by identifying what type of seeds they are and the date that you sealed them. Place these collected seeds in a cool and dry location such as in your refrigerator. Freezing them would damage the seeds.

Now, you have all the seeds you need for next year’s organic garden!

Watch this organic gardening how to video for some further tips:

Collecting and storing tomato seeds is a bit different than most other seeds. Here’s another organic gardening how to video to help you with collecting tomato seeds:

That’s it! Hope this Organic Gardening How To has been helpful. Until next time…

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Fall is quickly approaching and all organic gardeners know what that means – frost followed by snow. Extend your organic vegetable garden’s life by building this simple-to-build dome house. You’ll be able to grow delicious organic vegetables long into the fall season and perhaps all winter long!

The only materials that you’ll need are:

5 Pcs. – 1/2″ PVC schedule 40 pipe, each 10′ long

3 Pcs. – 1/2″ x 1″ x 8′ (1×2′s) pine boards (preferably treated)

2 Pcs. – 1-1/2″ x 1-3/4″ x 8′ (split one 2×4) pine boards (treated)

16 Ea. – 1/2″ roofing nails

1 Pc. – Sheet of heavy duty clear plastic

String or wire to secure the wood to the top of the PVC

Construction is simple. Watch this short video to see how easy it is to keep your organic vegetable garden growing during the approaching cold weather months:

And, what’s great about this is that you’ll be able to start next year’s organic vegetable garden much earlier in the spring!

An EASY ORGANIC GARDENING HOW TO.

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Potted herb gardens are so easy to make and that’s what this Organic Gardening How To is all about.

Wouldn’t life and food be boring without herbs? I know when I think about herbs, I can almost taste them in my mouth. Dill, cilantro, rosemary, basil – each has a spectacular flavor and smell.

The best place to plant herbs is in pots. That way, you can move them around to catch more sun as the season changes. And, you can also move them inside in the dead of winter.

Herbs require about five hours of direct sunlight per day.

There’s a wide variety of herbs that you can grow. Try tarragon, sage, dill, oregano, thyme, cilantro, basil, rosemary, parsley, marjoram, mustard, chives and many others. These can be raised from seeds or small plants can usually be found at your local nursery.

The only tools that you’ll need to make a potted herb garden are: pot , newspaper, organic potting soil , trowel , and a watering can .

Watch this Organic Gardening How To video to see how easy it is to make a potted herb garden:

That was easy, wasn’t it?! Why doesn’t everybody grow herbs?

Wishful thinking, I know! But, after this Organic Gardening How To Blog post, I know there will be a few more doing it.

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Growing poppies in an organic garden is so easy. Poppies produce a beautiful flower, are resilient to most pests and diseases, and require very little water. In fact, once you’ve planted them, you can almost ignore them – but, you won’t because they’re so beautiful!

There are many varieties of the poppy plant, each with their own color. The Red Corn Poppy is a deep red with purple-black centers. The Royal Weddings are white with a dark purple center. And, my favorite, the California Poppy are a bright orange. And, there are so many others.

There are varieties of the poppy that are illegal to grow, so stay away from them. These varieties are used to produce illegal drugs. They can generally be found with the word “opium” somewhere in their name.

Some poppies are perennials and others are annuals. Before planting, be sure of which variety you have.

Poppies like full sun/partial shade. They don’t need much water and they don’t like soil that’s always moist. So, grow your poppies in your organic garden with plants that have similar requirements. Water only occasionally.

Poppies are best grown from seeds. Plant the seeds directly into the soil after your last frost and try to avoid transplanting. Poppies don’t like to be handled.

Watch this video for some further tips on growing poppy seeds:

So, there you have it. Imagine all that color in your organic garden?! Give it a try.

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