How to Grow Spring Vegetables Organically

Put organic gardening principles to work in your spring vegetable garden to grow lettuce, green peas, and broccoli and its relatives. Eat all you grow with the confidence that comes from an organic harvest - no chemical pesticide residues on your food and no groundwater contamination from chemical fertilizer runoff.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Balanced Organic Fertilizer
• Beneficial Insects Such As Lacewings
• Compost
• Gardening Tools
• Mulch
• Organic Matter
• Organic Seed Packets
• Sprayers
• Watering Cans
• Compost
• Organic Matter

1. Start with organic soil. At the very least, amend your native soil with two inches of organic matter and incorporate a balanced organic fertilizer while tilling. See "eHow to Build Organic Soil" for more details on this very important step.

2. Be picky in choosing vegetable varieties with resistance to your area's pests. Don't grow what you know will be vulnerable. Investigate heirlooms and hybrids equally for their tough reputations - their strength makes them good candidates for organic gardening.

3. Plant your vegetables in a diverse pattern to distract insects that pierce, suck and chew leaves and carry diseases to similar plants. Instead of a row of spinach and a row of broccoli for pests to rip through, plant square patterns or groups of each and repeat the pattern to break up the mono-crop bug buffet.

4. Space each plant so that air circulates around it, and be sure water soaks in and then drains away. These organic strategies help prevent leaf and root diseases.

5. Keep foiling insects with organic methods. Exclude them with grow covers (woven fabric sheeting that lets air and water through), and encourage beneficial insects by growing a variety of flowers around your vegetables. Use companion planting for the one plant's ability to repel insects from the other - roses with garlic, tomatoes with basil, for example.

6. Use black plastic mulches to warm the soil in early spring, or let the soil warm naturally with a blanket of organic mulch. This helps prevent the inevitable weeds on unplanted soil.

7. Fertilize for steady growth that resists pest invaders: organic nitrogen on greens and lettuces, a balanced organic formula on broccoli and its cole crop cousins, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. Water consistently for the same reason. A little fertilizer and water at frequent intervals is better than a rare flush of fertilizer and torrent of water.

8. Work organic mulch and compost into the soil after each crop and before planting the next, or plant a cover crop or green manure if you won't be planting right away. Constant soil renewal marks a garden as truly organic and insures healthy vegetables every spring.

Tips & Warnings

• Get essential, localized growing information from county agents and regional writers.
• Use organic seed whenever you can, but save your own from heirlooms for future gardens.
• Plant "spring" vegetables in fall or late winter in Zones 8-10 and more tropical areas.

on 3/29/2006 Paul the gardener guy says save your leftover black coffee in old water bottles and mix 10% with water and share with those plants that attract slugs.

on 3/20/2006 Tobacco of any kind can cause a nasty virus that will decimate your garden. The tobacco mosaic virus can attack a wide range of plants, including tomato, pepper, eggplant, spinach, petunia and marigold. On tomatoes, virus infection causes light and dark green mottled areas on the leaves. The use of tobacco products during cultural practices should be avoided to prevent inoculation of plants with the tobacco mosaic virus. Those people using tobacco or working with infected plant material should wash their hands thoroughly in soapy water before handling tomato plants.

The same holds true if you smoke, you can pass the virus with cigarette residue on your hands. Cigars, cigarettes, and pipe tobaccos can be infected with tobacco mosaic virus. Handling these smoking materials contaminates the hands, and subsequent handling of plants results in a transmission of the virus. Therefore, do not smoke while handling or transplanting plants.

Personally, I use chopped cayenne peppers ground in the blender with several cloves of garlic, let sit a few hours and strain well. Put into a spray bottle and spray tops and undersides of infected plants. The little buggers don't like the taste!

on 11/22/2005 Two simple organic pesticides are tobacco juice and soap water. Soapy water works well for mites and aphids. It should be soapy enough to coat leaves. Tobacco juice should be a dark caramel color. Simply mix tobacco and water. The cheap cans works well.

on 11/22/2005 Supplement your garden with homemade compost. Simply place any leftover food (no dairy or meat products) into a pile outside. Add a bit of dirt and water the pile every few weeks. In order to aid in the decomposition, turn your compost pile about once a month, or twice a month if you add ingredients frequently. To keep it neat, you can use a barrel or build three walls around your compost pile.