greenliving
Organic Made Easy 10 Time-Saving Tips
Home-Grown
for a Healthy Garden by Barbara Pleasant
Organic gardening experts share strategies for growing a great garden and having a life, too.
T
he arrival of planting season has a stunning effect on veggie garden- ers. We talk to our seedlings as if they were children, and don’t mind working until dark if that’s what it takes to get the fingerling potatoes in the ground. Then, complications like crabgrass and cabbageworms appear, and keeping up with all the details feels impossible. We can lighten looming chores by using these time-saving tips, which will reduce later workloads when storms and the hot summer sun threaten to squelch the magic. Mulch to reduce watering and
prevent weeds. “You can cut your watering time in half by mulching crops with a three-to-four-inch layer of straw or shredded leaves,” says Niki Jabbour, award-winning author of The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener and Groundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You
24 Hudson County
NAHudson.com
Grow Your Garden. “Crops like toma- toes, potatoes, kale, broccoli, cucum- bers and squash all benefit from a deep mulch, which reduces the need to water and also prevents weeds, saving even more time.” Grow herbs in convenient con-
tainers. Family cooks will harvest kitchen herbs every day, in all kinds of weather, so don’t waste footsteps. Grow some parsley, basil and other herbs in large containers near the kitchen door. Try promising perennials. Plant them once, and vegetables like asparagus and rhubarb come back year after year in cold winter climates like the Midwest and Northeast. Where winters are mild, artichokes or chayote (pear squash) are long-lived and productive. Many resilient herbs will return each spring, too, includ- ing sage, mints, thyme and oregano. Tar- ragon and marjoram make trusty peren- nial herbs in the Sun Belt.
Stock up on organic seeds. “As a
year-round vegetable gardener, I try to come up with a list of all the seeds I’ll need for every season when I place an- nual seed orders,” Jabbour says. “That way, I will place fewer orders and have everything on hand at the proper plant- ing time, saving both time and money.” Organic seeds in consumer seed cata- logs and retail racks won’t be genetically modified or treated with pesticides. Be generous with organic compost.
With each planting, mix in organic compost along with a balanced organic fertilizer. Food crops grown in organi- cally enriched soil are better able to re- sist challenges from pests and diseases, which simplifies summer tasks. Grow flowers to attract beneficial
insects. Reducing or eliminating pesti- cides and increasing plantings of flowers can radically improve the balance be- tween helpful and harmful insects in a
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44