For all of you in the midst of prepping your gardens, here’s some tips for starting off the organic way. Anyone can use these tips if you want to get out of chemicals and have the lushest vegetables and healthiest flowers around.
First of all, when building your beds, in addition to the organic compost you will be adding make sure you add expanded shale. Expanded shale will greatly help in keeping your soil from compacting, it will promote aeration and it will hold water to keep the soil moist longer. Aeration is particularly important, because it promotes healthy micro-critter growth in the soil. Healthy soil = healthy plants. Feed the soil and you feed the plants.
Get yourselves some dry molasses and mix it in, too. It’s a powerful bio-stimulant, soil microbial food product. Thus, it feeds those critters. Get another bag and spread it on your lawn now and again in July and watch it take off!
Finally, once those plants and flowers start to pop up, give them a weekly foliar feeding with Garrett Juice or liquid seaweed. I prefer Garrett Juice. It feeds the plant via intake through the leaves. It does wonders to keep them healthy and strong. Simply mix 1-2 ounces of it with a gallon of water and spray in the morning or just before sundown. That way you avoid the heat of the day and the possible burning it could cause.
Most of these products are available in the organic section of Lowe’s — it’s better than Home Depot for these things. The expanded shale, as well as the others, can be found at North Haven Gardens. Feed stores are also good sources for that molasses as well as alfalfa pellets, another good amendment.
So, best of luck and I hope it all grows well for you all.
P.S… Don’t forget to invite us over for some of those killer tomatoes you will be growing if you follow these suggestions!
P.P.S… For those of you used to using Scotts, which has built its business as a supplier of lawn and garden chemicals, organics are not well written up in their website yet. They have 1 link that list their 3 products — that’s it that I can see.
Part of the public education link from Scotts about ‘Preparing Vegetable Garden Beds.’ is pasted and linked next. It’s indicative of what the public sees about their chemicals. "You don’t want hard, compacted soil in your garden. So start by digging it up. While you’re at it, take a moment to remove any rocks and weeds you expose. If you pull the weeds, make sure you get all the roots. Otherwise, they’ll come back next spring. A good idea is to spray them with Roundup® Weed and Grass Killer during your fall cleanup."
The other related product there they point to is their ‘Miracle-Gro Garden Soil for Flowers & Vegetables.’ Which contains the time released chemicals of ammonium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, calcium phopshate and potassium sulphate. All of which (by common knowledge in any number of places) are salts that can eventually cause soil changes. These chemicals, when added and continually used over time, will not promote heaalthy microbial growth. They will also will start making your soil more saline over time. To which you then have to administer amendments to ameliorate said salts build-up.
So, these are things to keep in mind if you want to move to 100% organics.
P.P.S.S… There have been 3 good posts here in past about the LH Community Garden progress. There has been a one-time mention of organic fertilizer and compost being supplied. So, you may or may not want to try my additional amendment suggestions if you have a plot there. Ask your advisor. I can assure you they will help. Our lot sat empty for decades before we built on it in 2005-06. We are 6 blocks from the LH site, on the same side of WRT, and had very similiar terroir. We get compliments all the time, so if you would like to see what my tips have produced, please leave a comment and we will be happy to arrange such. I can also tell you about our use of Texas green sand and lava sand then.
