How to Build an Organic Garden: What We Can Learn About Them from Our Grandparents

Organic gardens are gardens that don't use pesticides or fertilizers. This is the more natural way to grow a garden. What our grandparents did many years ago is now becoming popular again. Everyone wants to have and purchase items from an organic garden. Instead of buying fertilizer you instead add natural things to the soil such as decaying plants, vegetable scraps, or grass clippings. All of these things will add nutrients back into the soil.

When I was growing up we had an organic garden and my grandparents had one, we just didn't call it an organic garden. We took all the leftover scraps and threw them in the garden. In the fall the leaves that we raked up wasn't set to the curb for pick up we took these leaves and put them in the garden allowing them to decay there. This was the perfect start to the organic garden.

Our neighbors had cows and we brought truck loads of cow manure and spread that all over the garden. Which I might add wasn't pleasant at all to do, but we did have some great garden products. This was done in the springtime before the garden was even planted. The cow manure was from cows that weren't fed hormones to help them grow faster, or anything that wasn't natural. So this way there was no chance of getting these hormones back into the soil.

The plants that were chosen were plants that grew naturally in the area this way nothing had to be added to them to help them grow. The garden layout was done by the farmer's almanac planting certain plants beside each other to deter bug from the plants. It seems that certain bugs don't like certain plants and garden design was crucial in keeping the bugs out.

Weed killer wasn't used at all. In fact my parents and grandparents never bought weed killer, instead we used a rake and a hoe to get rid of weeds. It was nothing to get on your hands and knees in the garden pulling weeds after a good rain and the soil was damp. Not only did you get to pull weeds, you also pulled off the leaves that had bugs on plants. These weeds weren't burnt instead they were moved to another part of the garden to be compost for the next year's garden.

There are many ways that you can build your garden and not use dangerous pesticides. This will be more beneficial to your family and to their health. Generations before us seem to have it figured out how to build and grow an organic garden without much thought, and most of them were very successful in doing it.