How to Grow Great Vegetables, Organically

The freshest food is food you grow or produce yourself. The healthiest food is food that is grown organically. Combine the two and you have the best food for your table that you can get.

Food prices are rising. Growing your own food, even if this is only a small amount, gives you and your family, some control over your personal food supply. This control increases your family’s food security.

Anyone can grow vegetables organically. You may only have a space for a single container.

Container gardening is a great way to start your first garden. However, as your skills grow so can your ability to grow herbs, fruit, flowers, vegetables and shrubs in an almost endless variety of pots and containers. As long as the container is deep enough so that the plant’s roots can develop and has drainage so excess water can drain through, the plant will thrive.

A container garden may be only one pot with basil and cherry tomatoes or many pots growing beans, peas, beefsteak tomatoes, salad greens and much, much more. The size is not what matters. What matters is how you grow what you choose to grow.

The organic garden begins with seeds as do all gardens; however, to grow organically you need to buy organic seed. When you are seed shopping look for heritage seeds. Heirloom seed and heritage seed are used interchangeably. They both refer to an open-pollinated cultivar that was commonly grown for many years but is not widely used in industrial agriculture.

Now that you have your seeds you are ready to plant. If you are growing in container, you will need to obtain organic potting soil. If you are buying soil, be sure to specify organic.

Do you compost? If not then now is a good time to start a compost bin. Organic gardens thrive on the addition of organic material to the soil bed. An important point to remember is that soil is the gardener’s greatest growing ally. If you want to grow great vegetables then grow great soil.

Put down a good layer of mulch when you first build your garden and renew as necessary Adding mulch to your garden beds is an effective way to conserve water, reduce weeding and enhance your garden’s fertility.

Add a layer of organic material, the leaves from your trees, for example to the garden bed and this then mimics what happens on the forest floor where leaves and needles drop to the ground, where they break down over time and then absorbed as food. This method is a cold composting style and will take a little longer.

Growing your own food is very doable, whether it is in container, in the soil, or in a community garden plot, you can grow your own vegetables organically.