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!

Tags: Thursday+Thirteen, Thursday+13, T+13, T13, Gardening, Garden, Organic, Organic+Gardening, Pest+Control, Compost, Recycling, Weeds, Weed+Control

Do you hate spiders?

Has your house been invaded by ants, termites or cockroaches?

Is your garden a feeding ground for caterpillars, aphids, mites or grasshoppers?

Are you tired of rabbits or deer eating from the vegetable garden you worked so hard to create?

Are raccoons after your trash or tearing up your lawn?

Is your property infested with mice or moles?

Does your neighbor’s dog or cat cause you problems every day?

Or would you simply like to enjoy your summer evenings without mosquitoes, flies or yellow jackets?

This book offers powerful, all-natural solutions to these problems — and hundreds more. Every bug, pest, critter and animal related problem you can think of is covered in this comprehensive, detailed and creative book. And every one of the 1001 solutions in this book avoids the use of any kind of pesticide or other poison that could potentially cause harm to our families, our communities, and our natural environment.

There are over 2 billion pesticides manufactured in the United States every year. In 2002, more than 3.2 million people suffered medically related side effects from the use of pesticides. By using the simple, tried and true solutions provided in 1001 All Natural Secrets to a Pest-Free Property, you can make a significant contribution to reducing the damage caused by pesticides and other poisons.

This book has been designed to make it easy for you to find the information you need and gives you precise and clear answers to all your pest control questions. Protect your property and your family’s health today!

No one knows more about natural pest control than world renowned Dr. Myles H. Bader. He has spent countless hours over more than ten years of research to find the answers you need to know in order to keep your home, garden and grounds free of insects and critters of all kinds. Most importantly, Dr. Bader shows you how to do this without the use of poisons and toxic preparations.

Tags: Garden, Gardening, Garden+Pests, Garden+Dust, Beans

One of those pieces of advice concerned garden pests and diseases that can hurt my plants. Mostly such insects as aphids, cabbage worms, harlequin bugs, bean beetles, Japanese beetles, stink bugs, thrips, and more. And diseases like bacterial spot, blights, and powdery mildew.

My natural question was, “Well, Garden Doctor Dad – how do I control these things?? Can I?”

He told me about a product called “Garden Dust” that he uses on his plants (and flowers) every year to keep the insects and diseases at bay. He told me to apply the garden dust the very MINUTE I start seeing holes in the leaves of my plants – - because that generally means there is some bug.. or two or three.. munching away at my precious vegetables and flowers!

Today, in my vegetable garden – I noticed that my pole bean plants had quite a few little holes munched in the leaves – - so, luckily, I had followed my Dad’s advice and purchased a few containers of Garden Dust. I went to the garage and got the container and ‘dusted’ all my plants in the garden.

Hopefully, this will now keep the little munchers at bay and AWAY from my plants!

A week later – they turned pure white, then they turned brown, dried out and withered away. I had to dig them up and replace them with new cucumber plants – which after a week are doing extremely well at the moment. They’re deep green and nice and perky in their new home.

But why did my old cucumber plants turn white?

I’ve found two possible scenarios:

1.) The soil is too nitrogen rich. When we prepared the garden – we mixed in rotted manure into the soil and planted the cucumbers in it – - along with vegetable slow-release fertilizer. This proved to be too much fertilizer with the manure and slow-release fertilizer combined. solution: when the plants died.. I dug them up.. made a large hole around the area and filled that hole with regular topsoil (non fertilized) then mixed that soil with the surrounding fertilized soil. This mixed in good nutrients, but decreased the nitrogen content of the surrounding soil. I then replanted the cucumbers.

2.) the very night I planted the cucumbers… it got down to 38 degrees overnight. While that is not freezing temperatures – there is a such thing as a ‘chilling injury’ that can occur in cucumber plants… in zones that are cooler. It happens in zones where the temperatures warm prematurely (in Wisconsin that would be early -mid April) – - then gardeners (like ME!) get anxious to plant and they go out and get their crops in the ground – - then the temperatures dip to an ‘almost’ freezing temperature.. but not quite freezing. The chilling effect occurs: “Exposure to chilling
temperatures results in increased ethylene production and leakage of cell membranes. The degree of chilling injury depends on the temperature, the duration of chilling, and other factors such as relative humidity and soil moisture. Because chilling results in cell leakage, damage to plants can stress tissues. These include loss of turgor (wilting or drooping leaves) and leaf scorch, appearing as a whitish ring around the leaf margins. Other symptoms include reduced growth rate after warming and plant yellowing.” [source]

So – my mystery white cucumbers may be solved with one, or both, of the solutions above. Either way – I replanted and they are currently doing extremely well – - let’s hope that continues throughout the season!

She had problems with cute, furry little bunny rabbits coming into her vegetable garden and munching on her veggies. Yes, they are cute and fluffy and adorable – - but not when they’ve consumed your dinner salad!

To combat this – she used a tip that she heard on a local radio program called “Ask Your Neighbor” (it doesn’t exist anymore – but was wildly popular when I was a kid). It was a radio show that ran from 30 odd years, where they brought listeners with questions and experts on various topics like home improvement, do it yourself and gardening – with answers together for a friendly talk show.

Anyways – one of the callers suggested the following remedy for the bunnies in the garden – and to this day, Mom still uses it as a technique to keep the critters out – and it works!

Materials:
Clear, glass Mason Jars (The number will depend on the size of your garden)
Alluminum Foil Pie plates – same number as the jars.
Water

You take glass mason jars (making sure they dont’ have any labels on them) – fill them with water about 3/4 of the way full. Take the Mason Jars and line them up, about a a 1-2 feet apart, along the outter edge of your garden – placing the jars on top of the foil pie plates.

During the day – the water reflects the sun off the jar (and the foil) – - at night, the water and foil reflect the moonlight. This spooks the little critters and keeps them out of the garden.

Well, at least it works for me and Mom!