My OG Blog

In my last article we discussed the first fundamental of organic gardening: collect, collect, collect. The next two fundamentals are about what you do with all of this organic material you’ve collected. As was stated before the single most important ingredient in a successful organic garden is the soil and the best fertilizer for an organic garden is compost.

If you are lucky enough to be starting your garden with great soil compost will keep it rich and healthy. If you’re not so lucky, compost will build any type of soil into great soil. Compost improves sandy soil by adding nutrients and improving water retention. Compost will add nutrients and improve texture and drainage in heavy clays. No matter what soil type you have you can improve it by adding compost.

So now that you have collected all these great organic materials it’s time to start composting some of them. Some of the materials you will collect should be put into an active compost pile immediately. Kitchen scraps you don’t have room to freeze, weeds that have gone to seed, sick or diseased plants, fresh grass clippings (though there is another use for these), garden debris which may harbor harmful insects or their larvae and hay.

There are many different methods of composting find the ones that work for you. I personally have two or three methods going at the same time. Check out some of my other articles on composting to discover what works for you.

The most important factor for any garden to be successful is the soil. If you have great soil already you will want to keep it that way and if your soil is not so great you will need to improve it. There are four fundamental things you can do to improve the soil in your organic garden.  This will be a short series of articles which will allow me to discuss each of the fundamentals in more detail.

The basis for all of the fundamentals is ORGANIC MATTER. You can never have too much! Fundamental #1: collect, collect, collect. Find a place to keep all of the materials you collect, a corner of your garage, in your garden and old shed whatever works for your situation. Keep in mind some of the materials you collect will need to be used right away since they will turn sour if they are stored.

Some examples of organic matter to collect are:

Newspapers

Leaves

Pine Needles

Grass Clippings

Kitchen Scraps

The grass clippings are an example of material that should be used right away. Kitchen scraps are another, unless you have enough freezer space where you can freeze them in old milk cartons and save them for later use. Freezing kitchen scraps is actually a great way to save organic matter since the process of freezing and then thawing helps break the matter down more quickly. Things like the newspaper, leaves, pine needles, etc. can be stored indefinitely in a dry environment.

Don’t have enough organic matter around the house? Ask friends and family to save their old newspapers, leaves and grass clippings for you. There are almost always bags of leaves, and better yet pine needles, in the spring and fall sitting on the curbs waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck. Have a coffee pot at work? Bring a plastic pail to work and ask your co-workers to put the grounds in it.

Be resourceful there are hundreds of resources out there for you to collect all of the organic material you need! Your organic garden will love you for it and as an added bonus you will be helping reduce the waste that gets into your local landfill helping to create a greener, healthier planet!