Organic Gardening: Doing Your Part to Save the Environment

With energy at a premium and food prices soaring thanks to ethanol, you can do your part to conserve by growing an organic garden. With so much energy going into farming, if everyone had a garden and grew some of their own produce, there would not be so many problems with shortages and high prices.

An organic garden starts with a compost pile. Throw in any non meat based products like vegetable scraps and even newspaper. Another good way to conserve waste is to compost grass clippings and old leaves. You can even use horse manure if you wish. By reducing the amount of garbage you throw out, you can also help your garden grow as well as prevent too much garbage in land fills.

Even if all you have is a patio, you can garden in pots and they even have bins you can compost in. You can even get worms and put them in. Worms are very good for the soil. Tomatoes can be grown in hanging pots. And I grow my lettuce on a deck railing with a box designed just for that.

Other earth friendly ideas are starting seeds in your home with plastic bags and a wet paper towel. The humidity helps the seeds germinate and it is a sterile environment that can be reused for more seeds later.

Kohl rabbi is a delicious vegetable that has ball like stems that taste sort of like cabbage. It is easy to grow these in a well tended garden and grow well in colder weather. Other easy to grow vegetables are lettuce, tomatoes and radishes. Nasturtiums are a flower that you can eat and have a peppery bite. They are also beautiful.

Herbs are easy to grow organically. They like a lot of sun and well drained soil. And they even do well when the soil isn't the greatest. Not a lot of pests like to eat herbs because they taste so strong.

When growing plants, remember to take off the old flowers, or dead head them to make the flowering season last longer. And if your garden grows really well and you want to save some of your produce, many fruits and vegetables seem to freeze well.

Organic gardening isn't requiring big muscles, just a little know how. For example, you can put your blueberries in cages to prevent them from getting eaten up by pests. I hope you enjoyed these tips that will help you cope with rising food prices, and our growing landfills.