People often think that gardening is hard work and not worth the effort for what they receive in vegetables for their family. Could it be that home organic gardening can be fun and easy? By fun and easy I mean there is work to do, but that work can be made a fun project for the family and not a chore that must be done.
Here are three tips to gardening that will help you make your gardening more pleasurable and much easier. Those tips are to use compost for fertilizer, properly prepare the soil and use lots of mulch.
Compost for fertilizer
If you are an organic gardener you will want to use compost. I know you think that maintaining a compost pile is a lot of work, right? It does not have to be. You do not need to have any fancy bins or break your back turning the compost.
I keep my compost in a pile; I try to keep it neat. And, I do not turn my compost pile. Just let it sit until everything breaks down and put it on the garden. Now, you will need more compost to use this system, but to me, that is better than turning the pile. That gets to be work.
Make your pile out of kitchen scraps, yard waste and anything else you can find. I mix in about an inch of compost before planting and scratch a little around the plants as they grow. It really does not take that much compost to grow great veggies.
Soil preparation
If you are starting a new garden bed you will probable need to till the soil to get it loose enough to plant. But, once you get established you do not need to till very often if you are doing everything else right.
Once your garden is established, and you are keeping it well mulched, you can just pull the much back and set your plants or sow your seed. There is no need to run the tiller every time you plant something. This saves a lot of time and labor, plus it helps your soil structure.
Mulching
Mulch can be a life saver. It makes your gardening so much easier and is so much better for your garden. With mulch you do not need to spend a sweaty tiring weekend weeding the garden. Why? There are few weeds. Just walk through the garden, every once-in-awhile, and pull the little weeds as they stick up their heads and that’s it.
Your mulch can be a commercial biodegradable material or it can be leaves leftover from the fall. I use straw, as I can find it locally, but you can use most anything organic to smother out the weeds.
Following the above three tips for home organic gardening will help you garden easier with a lot less work and a lot more fun. Get the family involved in the gardening project. Many kids do not know where their food comes from.
