Thought we would join in the Thursday Thirteen fun this week. Instead of 13 things about Me - I have created The Garden 13 with 13 interesting gardening tips and tricks I’ve come across over the past week.

To start off our second Garden 13 - we’re talkin’ organic gardens! Organic gardens can be attractive and productive. Well-managed soil nurtures healthy plants and pesticide-free gardens have predators to deal with pests. The ten steps below will help you make your garden organic. Since now is the time to be thinking about preparing your garden bed for next year - - here we go . .

Here are 13 fabulous tomato varieties (the first 6 are in my garden):

1. Improving the soil - Whether you have heavy clay or light sand, you can’t do much about your soil texture. However, you can do something about the structure and quality, and any improvements you make to the soil will have a direct effect on the health of your plants.

   Soil conditioners, such as leaf mould, composted bark, homemade or municipal compost, benefit all soils. They can be dug in or simply spread on the surface where the weather and soil-dwellers, such as earthworms, will work them in. Their bulk will improve the drainage of heavy soils and help dry soils to hold on to moisture and nutrients.

2. Garden nutrients - Gardeners worldwide know the value of home-produced garden compost. It nourishes the soil, supplies it with nutrients and improves its structure, giving plants ideal growing conditions. It also helps combat soil-borne pests and diseases.

   The time to apply compost is when plants are actively growing, not during late autumn and winter when long wet spells will wash its valuable nutrients deep down into the earth, out of reach of next season’s crops.

   Organic gardeners recycle everything through the compost heap, only discarding badly diseased material. Mature compost looks and smells like good garden soil, but is a phenomenal mixture that is high in nutrients and teeming with the micro-organisms your soil needs to keep it in good condition. If you don’t have one already, start your heap off this year - you won’t regret it.

3. Making compost - Compost-making is a year-round activity. The secret to success is to have a good mixture of material. If the heap is too wet, you’ll end up with stinking sludge; if it is too dry, composting will be very slow. If you’ve got a lot of wet stuff, such as kitchen waste or green weeds, mix it with dry material, such as egg boxes and crumpled cardboard. Old envelopes are particularly good for mixing with grass clippings.

   You can use a container or make a heap directly on the ground. Add to it whenever you like, remembering to avoid very thick layers of anything very wet or very dry. If you have a large quantity of any one material, such as grass clippings or woody prunings, make a separate pile. Wait until you’ve got the balancing stuff to go with it, then add it to the main heap.

   If you’re energetic you can turn the heap around, mixing it all up occasionally - but you’ll get equally good compost by letting nature do the work for you.

4. Weed control - Organic gardens are not unkempt, but neither are they free of all weeds, since many are very useful. For example, nettles support aphids for early-feeding ladybirds. Thistles provide food, in the forms of nectar and seeds, for many different creatures, and butterflies breed in flowering grasses
5. More Weed Control - Once again, the key is to aim for a balance. If weeds are likely to compete with your plants for nutrients, they should be controlled. So-called organic herbicides don’t exist, so other methods must be used: 1. - Keep bare soil covered as weeds will seed in any open space. In ornamental areas, use ground cover plants or a mulch to smother weeds. Mulch around vegetables with leaf-mould or hay. 2. - During winter grow a green manure, such as clover, where you have no crop cover. As well as keeping down weeds, it stores nutrients in its roots. These are returned to the soil when it is uprooted and dug in during spring. 3. - Hoe off weeds as soon as they appear. All the green waste can be added to the compost heap where any minerals and other nutrients they have absorbed during their short growing time will be recycled for the benefit of your garden plants.
6. Seed and plant choice - Always buy plants that suit your site and soil, and choose disease-resistant varieties whenever you can. Seed catalogues offer a huge range of plants, both ornamental and edible, that have natural resistance to all sorts of problems. There are even a couple of potato varieties - ‘Cara’ and ‘Remarka’ - that are resistant to blight.
7. Changing perspectives - Organic gardeners want their plants to grow well, but not at any cost. Rather than rely on an arsenal of pesticide sprays to deal with problems, they use other means to achieve success. They also accept and tolerate a certain level of imperfection.
8. Chemical issues - There are many organic pesticides and fungicides available but these products last only a short time in the environment. If absolutely necessary only use them as a last resort.

   Chemicals, even organically acceptable ones, can cause more damage than we realise. Contact killers can often hit non-pest species, while treatments designed to combat fungal problems can be washed into the soil, damaging worms and other soil-dwellers. The best technique is to deal with problems early on, thus avoiding the need for chemical treatments.

9. Pest management - Don’t rely on just one method of pest control, as the best results come from using a range of techniques. Traps and barriers, naturally resistant varieties, biological controls and crop rotation are just some of the ways to keep pests at bay. Vigilance is crucial. By checking your plants often, you’ll spot problems in the early stages when they are easier to deal with. Often you can allow nature’s armoury of natural predators to work for you. Also, it pays to take good care of your soil, because healthy soil will produce strong plants that tolerate some pest attack.
10. Dead Bugs - My mother-in-law spreds dead bugs across her garden. Seriously. She collects the bugs in a jar. When she gets enough - she grinds them and then sprinkles the dead bug mixture on her garden. The theory? Live insects can smell the dead carcuses of their buggy friends and steer clear of the burial site. For her, it really works!
11. Disease management - There are several ways to combat diseases naturally. Always change the position of your vegetable crops each year. By doing this, you’ll avoid a build-up of soil-borne problems. Keep plants growing steadily by never letting them go short of water. Dry roots lead to stressed plants that are ready to succumb to any disease. Keeping the soil well-composted will help suppress many diseases as well.
12. Encourage wildlife - Organic gardens are vital havens for wildlife. Grow a range of plants providing food and shelter and see how quickly the creatures arrive. Aim to attract as wide a range of wildlife as possible, because greater diversity will produce better balance, allowing natural predators to keep pests under control.
13. Organic Gardening - Organic gardens can be attractive and productive. Well-managed soil nurtures healthy plants and pesticide-free gardens have predators to deal with pests. The ten steps below will help you make your garden organic.

Happy Gardening!

If I learned anything at all from my folks about gardening, is that it’s alllllll about composting. Compost! Compost! Compost!

The long list of benefits that come from composting goes on and on:

• It feeds your plants
• It improves drainage in your garden
• It helps retain moisture
• It makes weeding easier
• It helps distribute fertilizer better
• It attracts beneficial earthworms
• It promotes microbial activity (soil microbes break down organic matter so it can be used by your plants)
• It helps prevent disease

Composting is not only important, it’s easy! Pile up materials and let them break down - could it be any more easy??? In fact, composting makes the daily garden grind easier because it’s a convienent way to dispose of leaves, grass clippings, and other yard wastes. Forget bagging!

Fancy compost bins are available at your local gardening or home improvement store and are easy enough to install. They aren’t necessary, though - you can make your own with cheap wire fencing. Just build a framework with the wire. Once you have the bin, add the materials as you gather them during the ordinary course of your yard work. You’ll have compost in several months - - usually found at the bottom of the pile.

Cold Compost
Cold compost is the easiest method of composting - but it is also the longest way, taking the most time - it’s done by piling up materials and letting them break down for a year or two with an occassional turn if possible. Add cold compost to the bottom of a planting hole, but avoid mulching with it. When used on the soil’s surface, incompletely composted weeds or plants you’ve added, such as tomatoes or dandelions, may sprout and create problems.

Hot compost
Hot compost comes from a compost pile constructed with a balance of nitrogen-rich and carbon-rich materials that are turned regularly, at least once every week or two. It is also kept evenly moist with occasional watering. Hot compost becomes hot to the touch, and the heat kills weed seeds and many disease pathogens.

Tips for Faster, Better Compost

• Keep the pile a manageable size. make it no more than 4 feet across and 3 feet high so you can turn it easily with a pitchfork
• Turn the compost regularly, as often as every few days, with a spading fork or pitchfork. Any turning is helpful, but more is better because oxygen activates compost piles
• Cut up or shred materials. The smaller the materials, the faster they’ll break down.
• Layer nitrogen-rich material (green material) with carbon-rich material (brown materials) if a pile has too much nitrogen, it will get slimy. If it has too much carbon, it will fail to break down quickly.
• Keep it moist. A damp environment speeds up decomposition. During dry spells, soak the compost heap with a hose. However, avoid keeping the compost heap wet all the time, because that also prevents good decomposition. In cool, rainy climates, such as the Pacific Northwest, you may want to cover the ocmpost heap with a tarp or even build a shelter to keep it from being too wet.
• If you have trouble producing enough compost for your garden, consider purchasing it. It’s available in bags, sometimes labeled ‘humus’ adn in bulk for delivery via truck if you need a lot.

Good Materials To Compost
Nitrogen-rich: Alfalfa hay, fruit and vegetable scraps, grass clippings, greenleaves and weeds, manure, seaweed.

Cargon-rich: Dried leaves, shredded newspaper, straw, woody stems and sticks

Other materials: coffee grounds, tea leaves, eggshells, pine needles, wood ashes

DO NOT ADD: black walnut leaves, nuts and branches, Bones, Cat, dog or other pet feces, diseased or invasive plants, meat or meat products, oils fats and greases, seed heads.

We spent the day today started a new vegetable garden in our backyard. I wanted just a small garden in this spot, for starters. I started by following my own advice and graphed the garden out on a piece of paper first. Once I graphed out the size of it - - which turned out to be 12 foot by 15 foot . . I then listed out each of the vegetables that I wanted to plant in this garden.

My list:

1. Tomatoes
2. Cherry Tomatoes
3. Grape Tomatoes
4. Green Beans
5. Peas
6. Onions
7. Carrots
8. Broccoli
9. Cauliflower
10. Cucumbers
11. Lettuce
12. Various Herbs

Once I had that list - I researched each plant to determine the spacing needs for each plant. This way - I knew ahead of time how many plants I could put in a row, and how much space I would need. Some plants are crawlers (cucumbers) - - others are root plants that don’t need a lot of room (carrots, onions) - - others are climbers needing trellises or cages (tomatoes, beans, peas).

Armed with this knowledge - we set about the task of creating the bed, first. We chose a nice location in the yard that was sure to recieve a good 6-8 hours of direct sunlight during the day. We used steaks and string to mark off the exact area we needed and started digging the edge.

Once we had the edges defined, we tilled the ground about 12 inches deep. Turning up all the soild and grass. Luckily, we didn’t find any stones or rocks in the ground at all - - we found real excellent and rich sandy soil that would be perfect for our garden.

Once the area was tilled - - we removed the top 3 inches of soil from the area and replaced it with a compost mixture with rotten manure for a good fertilizer base.

The whole process of edging the area, digging it up, tilling it, removing the top 3 inches and replacing with compost took us approximately 4 hours to complete. We would have kept going, except the skies were warning us to pack it in and head inside. We have quite a doozy of a storm coming our way!

Tomorrow, weather providing - we will finish the bed off by edging it with the brick that we bought from our local garden center:

We decided to put an edge around the garden to keep a good separation of garden and grass - since our grass is very rich, thick and fast growing - we don’t want it growing into the garden!

I’ll post updates on our garden progress as time goes on.