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Grow Your Greatest Garden

 Suggestions and ideas from the March magazine, Organic Gardening.

What “organic gardening” means.

Organic gardening means having a lush green lawn, plus beautiful, fragrant flowers, and bountiful fruits and vegetables--without putting chemicals into the ground.  It’s about looking out on  landscape you have always wanted, making it as lovely as you have always dreamed, and as safe and healthy as your family deserves.  COMMENT:  Now, only if we could actually do that.

How to Enjoy Your Garden More (and work in it less):

Try these steps in your garden.  1)Before the growing season, feed the plants a balanced, organic fertilizer, 2) When planting vegetables, incorporate compost and slow-release fertilizer, 3) Keep overhead watering to a minimum; use drip irrigation on a timer and adjust it to suit the plants’ seasonal needs, 4) Mulch to conserve moisture, control weeks, and fight pests and disease.

Tips for Higher Yields:

Build raised beds--Raised beds drain well, deterring diseases encouraged by waterlogged soil.  Vegetables also produce better in a raised bed’s loose soil.

Put the right plant in the right place-Choose plants that are suited to your climate and the sun exposure your garden receives.  Also, select varieties

that are resistant to pests and diseases common in your area.

Practice Crop Rotation-Rotating crops according to plant families wards off some plant diseases and keeps the soil from being depleted of nutrients.

Invite the Three Sisters for a Larger Harvest: Plant corn, pole beans or peas, and squash or melons together.  The plants will not only take up less space, but also benefit each other.  The corn supports the climbing beans; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil; and the squash or melon vines act as a living mulch to cool soil and suppress weeds.

It's not the years that make us grow, but the challenges that we know.