The organic food market is becoming a big industry due to the high demand for organic food products. Some important tips are shared so that you can start a garden at your home as well as scale your farm on a larger scale.
How to do organic farming at home
To avoid pesticides and for growing organic vegetables you need to start from the beginning. In the beginning, you can start just with some plants at your convenience. You need to perform land preparation for the garden and for that, you can hire someone. You can do it by yourself with the help of some important garden tools. Organic gardening means you won’t use synthetic or chemical fertilisers and pesticides on your plants and crops.
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Tools for organic farming
To start a garden at home you need to collect some tools.
- Power gear bypass pruner
- Fiskars softouch garden tool
- Test kit for soil
- Chamber tumbling composter
- Gardening gloves for women and men
- Watering can
How to start organic garden for beginners
You need to perform the below-given steps to start a new garden.
Preparing the best soil
First, you need to choose the best soil for your vegetable garden. Remember, you eat healthy food to maintain good health and the same is needed by plants; healthy food. Healthy soil is helpful for producing healthy plants whereas chemical soil can reduce the health benefits of the yield. To get the best results properly conditioned soil is required.
First of all chemical mixed soil seeps into your food and it also harms the good bacteria, worms and other microorganisms in the soil.
Soil testing is a basic but important step and people often miss this basic step. We highly recommend soil testing before organic garden startup, in order to check your soil quality you can test it by yourself or you can send a sample to your local agriculture extension office.
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At a minimum fee, you will get all the details about your soil quality including a complete breakdown of pH and nutrient levels. Apart from this, you will also get treatment recommendations from the office, don’t forget to update them that you are starting an organic vegetable garden at home.
If you are doing soil tests by yourself then you should purchase the best soil tester meter for the garden. Soil testing will produce more appropriate results while testing in the falls whereas applying organic nutrients before winter is considered a good practice.
If you don’t want to perform soil testing it is ok but make sure the soil consists of enough organic matter including leaf compost, leaf and grass clipping, cow dung and manure. A good amount of (FYM) farmyard manure is necessary for your home garden if you want to harvest healthy plants on their harvesting time otherwise you would hardly be able to harvest anything even a couple of months after application.
Planting crops
You should choose all vegetables according to their growing climate conditions. Bed raising results in good vegetable production, vegetables and flower cuttings should be grouped tightly on the beds. They should be a specific row-to-row and plant-to-plant spacing according to various vegetables. Ample, row-to-row spacing is helpful for air circulation which results in fungal attack reduction. Raised beds are good farming practice whereas grouping helps you target compost and nutrients as well as reduces weeding and water wastage.
Organic garden plants
While answering a question about what vegetables to grow in your garden and if you are a flower lover but a bit confused about which flowers to plant then the below-given list might help you.
Zucchini – Zucchini for small gardens are preferable vegetables to select by beginners and is basically known as summer squash. Zucchini are one of the easiest garden-growing plants and you should choose the best zucchini for the garden as a garden beginner or intermediate.
Indeterminate tomatoes gardeners delight – The speciality of Indeterminate tomatoes is its consistent fruit-producing habit, as the name suggests the vines keep growing and producing new fruit until the frost, hence the gardener is delighted.
Non-hybrid pole beans – These are old-fashioned pole beans that keep growing and producing until winter. They are one of the easiest garden plants for beginners.
Tall snow peas and sugar snap peas – They are one of the best garden plants for beginners. They are garden friendly, delicious by taste and easy to grow.
Swiss chard – Swiss chard is yet another easy-growing garden plant. It is a member of the beet family and both its stems and leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. Chard is also known as leaf beet, seakale beet, spinach beet and silverbeet. It is well known for bright and colourful stems that come in rainbow colours – pink, orange, yellow, red and white.
Watering
Morning is considered the best time to water plants because morning is cool with less air resulting in less amount of water lost via evaporation. While watering the plants in the evening they stay moist overnight resulting in fungal and bacterial disease damage.
Established plants do not need watering every day and experts also suggest the same hence, it is recommended to give less water to your established plants. Per week nearly 1-inch watering including rain is required. For a stronger plant, you should go with one or 2 applications per week, moreover, collected rainwater is the best water to use for your garden.
Weeding
Regular weed removal is one of the important gardening practices for a good and healthy garden. You can reduce weeds by mulching techniques which are also helpful for soil strength. While using Lawn clipping remember they are high in nutrients, and avoid using them for every plant instead, you should use them with high nutrient-demanding plants such as squash and lettuce.
Organic pesticides
When your plants are affected by pests it means your plants might be suffering from less light, moisture and nutrients.
Natural predators such as frogs, toads, lizards and worms are good for soil health. Beneficial insects such as ladybugs are also good for your garden health, you might believe or not but it’s true many nurseries sell cans of them. Growing plants with small blossoms such as dill and sweet is good to attract insects. You can also select horticulture oils, insecticidal soaps, hot pepper sprays and garlic sprays.
How to make organic pesticides
To make organic pesticides at home you need to perform the following steps.
- Collect these items – Neem twigia, Neem leaves, Hemp, Kaner, Papdi, aankh.
- Wash all of them clearly.
- Now cut all the above into small pieces.
- Boil all these mixtures for 1 day on low flame.
- After boiling separate both hard and liquid forms.
- Now remove the solid form and collect the liquid in a bottle.
- Your organic pesticide is ready to use.
- Note it is now a highly concentrated poison so use it as guided below.
- Add only one glass of this recently made pesticide to 15-16 litre water.
- Later you can add or exceed it to 1.5 or complete 2 glasses to 15-16 litre water.
- Now arrange a spray bottle to use this.
Harvesting
After putting in lots of hard work, now it’s time to enjoy all your effort. Your plants will produce more if you harvest them on time and correctly. Harvesting needs to be done at the correct time regularly and for some plants and vegetables every day.
While harvesting herbs you can pick them up early in the morning if needed fresh, whereas while storing you should wait until they flower because they can produce the best flavour. While harvesting leafy greens do partial harvesting meaning a little from each plant. When it comes to harvesting broccoli you should wait until the central portion (head) becomes large. Sharp knives and scissors are good tools to use for harvesting your garden plants and vegetables.
Cleaning
Last but not least cleaning plays a vital role in your organic garden. You should remove all the sick plants if noticed. These plants will surely not produce healthy fruits and if you will not remove them they may spread the disease to other plants. So, removing unhealthy and sick plants is part of good garden practice.
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