Does anyone have a totally organic garden?

Question

If so what do you use for pest control? what do you use instead of miracle grow??

Answer 1

Yew, totally organic. No fertilizer like Miracle grow is needed if the garden is heavily mulched each year. The organic material you put around your plants breaks down and enrichs the soil. When you add more mulch, the organic process continues. No need of any fertilizer. Insects-nothing. My insects maintain themselves for the most part. Insects thrive on controlling themselves by attacking other insects. With my vegetable garden, I leave spaces for native weeds to grow. The flowers are lovely and insects seem to prefer the native weeds to my vegetables. I also have a very bird friendly yard. I grow things like choke cherry, blueberries (some for me, some for them) etc that the birds like to eat. The birds also wine and dine in my garden. At sunset each night, my garden is full of bug eating birds. I also have water dishes in the garden for toads, snakes, etc that come out at night and snack on the vermin such as voles, moles, etc. that can knock out a garden. If a bug problem gets serious, I will usually handpick the critters and drop them in soapy water. I remove caterpillars to the woods because in the garden they are nasty but they do turn into butterflies and moths. Some caterpillars, like the tent caterpillar, are not worth saving so they get the "treatment." These are the major ways in which I handle my garden and so far my methods have worked.

Answer 2

The other side to gardening that is changing is the increase in the way more and more gardeners are producing the crops with most gardeners moving away from using chemicals that can infiltrate the food chain with potentially harmful affects to both humans and wild life and moving towards a more organic form of gardening. Organic gardening ensures that only totally natural products are used in the growing of the crops, whether it is by using totally organic fertilizer or using totally organic pest control.

For more information check this out at http://growownfood.net/

Answer 3

Yes, I have an organic veggie and flower garden.

It's beautiful; I wish I could post a picture here.

For pest control it depends on what the pest is and if I really think action is necessary. Sometimes, in a very short time, the problems seems to just work out. Other times only minor action is required.

For example some kinds of aphids don't really do any harm to a tree or plant - they are just kind of gross. So I may hose them off with plain water, perhaps put sticky tape around the trunk to prevent ants from crawling up the tree. Ants like aphids - they eat their 'dew'. They actually farm them kind of like how we farm chickens for their eggs. Ants will kill the ladybugs that eat the aphids. If you add more ladybugs and remove the ants – tada! - no more aphids. You can actually buy ladybugs and let them loose on a plant. To get them to stay on the plant you can wrap a plant in row cover cloth (thin gauze cloth that lets light air and water pass through). Let them free when all the aphids are gone.

If it was a harmful pest - I may investigate other ways to get rid of it. There are many homemade concoctions that include garlic, lemon juice, coffee, tea or rhubarb juice and water. You just spray or water the plant with that. Slugs - get drowned in beer and I pick them off the plants in the early a.m. You can totally prevent some pests like cabbage caterpillars by covering the crop as it grows with row cover cloth.

I don’t find the organic way of pest control any more difficult than the non-organic way. It’s easy to search for resources on the net. Walk around your garden everyday and you’ll get to know it and what it needs. It doesn’t take long to build this knowledge and it’s rewarding.

As for organic fertilizer you can buy it in many garden centers. I use compost – homemade, organic bone meal, Epsom salts and well-composted manure. I get so many tomatoes – literally hundreds per plant. I have to hack them down to prevent them from growing over 6 feet tall.

Hope this starts you in the right direction! Happy Gardening

Answer 4

Mine is all organic, unless I see poison ivy. That is my only exception for obvious reasons. I use a variety of native plants and I research them to make sure that I have the right soil, that they would have the right sun exposure, how much water they need, etc. If I make good plant choices based on this process, then pests are not a problem. Having a good variety of plants that are already adapted to the environment promotes biodiversity (the pests control one another). So there's a natural balance at work.

I use organic compost as fertilizer. If you make the right plant choices, then it's all you need. It has pretty much all the nutrients that plants need and it doesn't poison the soil like chemical fertilizers do.

Answer 5

Hi catbecca,

I compost organic matter & use it in place of a commercial fertalizer like Miracle Grow. All summer I collect Grass clippings and in the fall leaves. I pile it & let it rot down. It makes very rich soil that I mix into my garden.

I plant Marigolds among the vegetables to repel the rabbits and bugs.

Norm

Answer 6

i just look very carefully every day for insects my garden is 100x150 so it takes a little work. i catch junk fish carp,suckers in the spring and use them for fertilizer it works better anyway .when looking for bugs look under the leaves especally plants like cabbage,brocolli,califlower look for little yellow specks that will be little eggs rub them off also you may miss some look at the leafs and see if any are eaten the bugs will be there good luck you can make a fertilizer with choped up fish put in 5 gal bucket and let set in sun for couple weeks till it disolves it will be very strong need to mix with water or it will burn plants