A very important part of organic gardening is the health of your soil. After all, if the soil isn’t healthy, the plants are not as strong to resist pests and diseases.
Also, if your soil is healthy, the plants and produce are so much healthier.
There is a reason a home grown tomato tastes so much better than one bought from the store.
These are simple steps that we can incorporate into our gardens, which can increase the microbial activity in the soil, and therefore have a profound effect on the health of the soil.
Ways you can increase the health of your soil is by composting, adding green manures, diversifying your plants and planting to attract beneficial insects.
How to Improve Soil Fertility
Compost.
I love compost, it’s an amazing picture of taking waste and turning it into gold.
My husband built me a barrel composter, which is what we use. There are several different types of composters, such as the tumbler and the bin.
Tumbler composters are easy to buy, and bin ones are easy to make.
Composting is a simple matter of taking your waste produce, incorporating dry material, water, and turning it a couple times a month.
The first year we added our compost to our garden, we had such a small amount that only a small section of the garden got it.
\Nevertheless, the corn that grew there was a good couple inches higher than the rest.
After that, I couldn’t get enough compost.
Healthy soil produces more nutrient-rich produce, which in turn helps nourish our bodies much better than food grown in nutrient-depleted soil.
Encouraging soil health is to the advantage of us humans, for the food we grow, is the food we feed our bodies.
Add Green Manure Crops Rotations
Compost is an awesome way to build the health of your soil, but other ways to do this is to grow green manure crops, and add animal manure, moss, and/or sand according to your soil’s needs.
Getting your soil tested can help you decide what is lacking.
Find alternatives to chemical solutions.
If your soil in your garden will be healthy, it will go a long way to healthy plants. However, sometimes you need an extra set of muscles.
Some examples of organic alternatives are organic weed killer and diamateacous earth.
Diversify and Rotate.
Plant a lot of different varieties.
An ecosystem consists of hundreds of different varieties, all growing together. While that might not be feasible in your garden, add as many as possible.
Also rotate your varieties year for year.
Different types of plants take up different amounts of nutrients and have different disease problems. Rotating your plants helps keep this under control.
Plant extra flowers for bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects.
You can buy packets of flower mixes at T&T Seeds that are mixed for that purpose.
If you provide food for these creatures, they will come.
So in order to have more success with organic gardening, we need to have healthy soil.
It can take a couple of years before you can really notice a difference in the quality of your food, but you will notice a difference in your production in as little as a year.
Thinking it might have been a fluke, the next year we added our small amount to our strawberry patch.
Wouldn’t you know, those plants that received the compost consistently gave us twice as many strawberries then the rest.
Conclusion
A very important part of organic gardening is the health of your soil.
After all, if the soil isn’t healthy, the plants are not as strong to resist pests and diseases. Put a few of these suggestions into practice and watch your garden transform.