Organic Solutions In Your Yard and Garden

Looking to grow a more natural lawn or garden? There are dozens of great products designed for organic gardening and yard care out there. The trick is finding out which ones will work best for you.

Below, we’ve selected 12 unique products including organic fertilizers, pesticides, and gardening gadgets that will work great for the serious or novice organic gardener. These products are safe for you and your family and in most cases are just as effective as chemically-based products.

1. Mycor Root Builder

Mycorrhizal fungi are tiny, harmless critters that attach themselves to plant roots and actually help plants to make use of organic chemicals in the soil. You can stimulate the growth of Mycorrhizal fungi and get them to work more efficiently with GreenSense Mycor Root Builder. Mycor Root Builder contains Endomycorrhiza, Ectomycorrhiza, Scleroderma, Kelp, Zeolite, and Humate.

It will work on all the plants you grow, including turf grass. You can use it directly on your new transplants or use a coring drill or auger to penetrate deeper into the soil for established plants.

2. Natural Insecticide

It's a fact of life that your plants will attract bugs. You can minimize this problem by growing plants native to your region. These plants are typically more resistant to pests. Companion planting is another solution for fighting off bugs. However, even with these simple techniques, you're still likely to have problems with pests at some point in your gardening experience.

Gardeners all over the world have found that natural citrus-based insecticides will kill off most of the pests you are likely to see in your garden. SharpShooter Organic Insecticide is a tried and true spray designed to kill common garden pests, including cut worms, caterpillars, snails, slugs, aphids, bean beetles, cabbage loopers, earwigs, flea beetles, Japanese beetles, leafhoppers, mealybugs, mites, rose chafers, scales, and adult whiteflies.

It is even safe enough to use indoors if you happen to have houseplants that you'd like to treat.

3. Hot Pepper Wax

Another way to keep insects and even animals out of your garden is with this Hot Pepper Wax spray. Animals and insects are instantly repelled by the strong cayenne pepper oils. The spray lightly adheres to the plants with a natural food grade wax, and therefore won’t run off when you water your plants or after a heavy rain.

This is the perfect product if you have a lot of edible crops to protect. It works to repel most insects and animals such as squirrels, gophers, chipmunks, and hedgehogs.

If it sounds like you’re going to be turning your vegetable patch into a salsa factory, not to worry! You can harvest your vegetables and eat them on the same day you spray your plants, without any spicy residue. They just need a good washing and they’re ready to eat!

4. Bat Guano

The Bracken Bat Cave in Texas is famous for being the cave with the highest population of bats on the planet (roughly 20,000,000 of these fanged, flying mammals). This means it’s a great place to harvest high quality bat guano, which is an ideal natural fertilizer. Why bat guano? It has a high humus content and works great as a soil builder and fertilizer. It's also 100 percent natural.

Farmers and gardeners have used bat guano for hundreds of years. It wasn't until recently that inorganic fertilizers have become popular enough for people to forget that there is a natural option that works just as well!

Additionally, the folks who make this product, make sure not to harm any bats during the harvest. They follow the high standards of Bat Conservation International, so you can feel good about buying this natural garden and bat-friendly fertilizer.

5. Organic Natural Fire Ant Killer

The red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), is a major problem for many gardeners. They make big nests that can uproot turf and affect your mowing. Once they get established, fire ants can get into your compost pile, kitchen, vegetable garden, and even your electrical equipment. Moreover, if you've ever felt the sting of a fire ant, you know how painful it can be!

A natural fire ant killer with Conserve is just the thing to put an end to these pesky critters. This product comes in a shaker, and contains enough fire ant killer to treat 22 mounds (around 10,000 square feet). You just need to apply it to each mound and wait. You can also sprinkle it in your flower beds and around the outside of your home to keep the ants from coming inside. This fire ant killer is a synergistic blend of natural plant oils.

You can use the fire ant killer as part of the Texas A&M developed Texas Two Step fire ant control method. This product is step one of the process. Step two involves using a citrus-based liquid insecticide that will help keep the ants from coming back.

6. Grampa's Weeder

Weeding is one of the most important chores in gardening, but one of the least enjoyable, at least for me. Who wants to spend hours ripping up weeds, especially when they keep coming back! Grampa's Weeder is an extremely effective, easy to use and care free weeder that is based on a 1913 design.

You can figure it works if it has been around that long! It has a simple lever action and is made of durable metal. You can use it while standing up, which will save your back from the aches and pains of stooping over a garden plot. This will be a one-time purchase as this weeder will last a lifetime. It doesn’t matter if you’re a grampa or a grand kid, this is one weeder you need!

7. Natural Organic Weed Killer

When you’ve got a serious weed problem or time constraints, you many not have the energy to manually weed your garden. However, instead of grabbing a bottle of harsh chemicals to kill off those weeds, try out a natural weed killer.

BurnOut is a citrus and vinegar-based liquid that will cause the weeds to wilt and die within minutes. If you have grass that’s growing into your garden beds or onto your patio, it will work to kill it off for easy removal. While perennial weeds may need a couple treatments, most annuals will be gone after the first application.

8. Organic Liquid Lawn Fertilizer

For a nice, lush yard without chemicals, try out HastaGro 12-4-8 Organic Liquid Lawn Fertilizer. This product is a precise blend of lawn food supplements, a natural soil activator, and Humate Liquid Humus. This means that you will stimulate the beneficial soil organisms that live under your grass.

You can use it to quickly green up your lawn, from spring to fall. It works a lot like other lawn fertilizers. Simply mix it, attach it to your hose, and spray. One container treats about 4,000 feet of turf grass.

9. Tumbleweed Australian Composter

Organic gardeners know that most problems in the garden go away when your plants are growing under the healthiest conditions possible. Having good quality soil with lots of organic compost mixed in is the first step to ensuring healthy, happy plants. Moreover, composting is a great way to recycle you organic home and garden waste.

To make high quality compost in your own home, you’ll need to follow a few tips. First, set up an area where you’re going to compost. Next, make sure you know what materials are safe to compost. Next, you’ll want to think about how you want to compost.

A tumbling compost bin is probably one of the quickest, cleanest, and most efficient ways to compost. The Tumbleweed Australian Composter is a unique patented design that will create large quantities of high quality compost in no time at all. If you spin it daily, you’ll get ready-to-use compost in less than 3 weeks.

And don't forget a Composting Book to go with it.

This simple, best-selling guide to composting will help you compost up to 30 percent of your family’s home and garden waste. This is the definitive guide to composting, written by folks who have dedicated their lives to organic gardening and compost education.

10. Rainsaver Rain Barrel

Water is a precious and expensive resource these days. By simply investing in a rain barrel and using stored rainwater to water your garden instead of water from the tap, you can save money and grow happier plants.

The water coming from your tap has been treated as drinking water for human consumption, which your plants don’t necessarily need. In fact, most garden plants typically prefer naturally “soft” rainwater, which is also free of chemicals, minerals, chlorine, and fluoride. After all, rainwater is what plants have been thriving on for millions of years!

An 80 gallon Rainsaver rain barrel will allow you to store more than enough water for your garden. You can use the excess water to water your house plants, or even wash your car.

11. Horticultural Corn Meal

Horticultural cornmeal is an organic way of controlling harmful soil fungi and problems with plant roots. If you’ve got vegetable crops, you may be familiar with these soil related fungal problems.

When you apply horticultural corn meal to the soil, it actually strengthens beneficial fungi such as Trichoderma, which will fight off the harmful fungi that can attack your plants. It also helps build up the quality of the soil, which will benefit all the plants in your garden.

Apply it directly to grass, soil, and all your flowerbeds. You don’t have to worry about over applying this product, as it will in no way harm your plants. Also, if you have a pond, you can use it to remove algae. However, read the instructions carefully on the package when you use it in your pond, as applying too much can cause oxygen depletion problems.

12. Electronic Soil Tester

If your plants are struggling and you don’t see any signs of pests or diseases, chances are you have a problem with your soil. The best way to treat the problem is to identify what’s wrong and correct your soil accordingly. For example, your plants may not be healthy if you have improper soil pH or poor drainage.

An electronic soil tester is a great little gadget that will easily diagnose the problem and let you know when you’ve got your soil just right. Multipurpose soil testers are easy to use and usually include readings like soil pH, soil moisture, total combined nitrogen and phosphorus levels, and potash levels. They’ll also tell you the intensity of the light hitting your plants so you’ll know if it’s too shady or too intense.

Once you have the proper pH, nutrient levels, drainage, and light levels, your plants will be able to efficiently make use of water and the nutrients in the soil. This will make them less susceptible to diseases and pests, and will save you time and energy taking care of them.

Original at Clean Air Gardening

Tried and True Ways To Maximize Garden Space

At some point, every gardener will confront the inevitable there's no more space.

For several years now, you've been digging up square footage for more vegetable space, encroaching on what little backyard lawn you have remaining.

You might have even considered the front lawn as the 'next frontier.' But before you start tearing up the grass by the driveway, reevaluate the space you have in the backyard, and start considering ways to maximize yields from it.

I remember my frustration with the sparse amount of room I had for crops years ago when I lived in fairly close quarters in our Bridgeport home. With slightly under 300 square feet (14 by 20 feet) of usable garden, I decided I d better start figuring out how to get the best possible yield from it.

That s when I came up with techniques that helped me produce 500 pounds of tomatoes, 200 pounds of eggplant, 100 pounds of peppers, 75 pounds of carrots, and plenty of leafy greens, all confined to that little bit of space. These same techniques have helped me maximize every square foot of garden space at the new home in Huntington, as well.

Here they are:

●- Build up your soil: Every gardener knows the value of building up garden soil through additions of organic matter, but how many actually devote the time and resources to really doing it? Pumping up your soil's 'tilth' is not something you do by adding a bale of peat moss one time, and never doing much else thereafter.

The beneficial effects of adding organic matter to your soil on a consistent basis can t be overemphasized. You must have a lasting commitment to creating a more fertile soil. This is the back-breaking work, the double-digging of the soil, the constant hauling and entry of new organic matter to the soil, maintaining the proper pH, introducing the proper and timely release of nutrients into the soil.

This is an ongoing project, and it s really where you ve got to start and continue, for as long as you garden.

●- Create raised beds: making raised garden beds is the fastest way I know how to obtain a deep, rich layer of fertile soil for your garden plants.

Making the raised beds is lots of work.

You'll need to double dig to create a loose and fluffy bed of soil that is two feet deep and as much as a foot above the soil line. In my garden soil you'd have no problem sticking your arm 'shoulder deep' into the soil. That's loose! That's fluffy, that's good drainage, and that's what you need to start striving for (and digging) in your own garden.

●- Round out your beds: How you make the beds is just as important as making them in the first place. A simple thing like rounding both ends of the beds, rather than making them squared, is the difference between 100 pounds of produce or 150 pounds of produce from a given spot.

Space-efficient techniques like this one take a rounded bed say five feet across, and allow you a six-foot wide arc, creating a planting surface that is a foot wider than a flat bed. It might not seem like a lot of additional room, but just multiply that extra room by the length of your bed, and you ll soon realize just how much extra garden you have gained!

● Space plants better: In order to do this, you might have to ignore some of the conventional advice given on spacing plants. When I first started doing this, I made numerous mistakes that I've corrected over the years.

Straight rows are needed out on the farm so the tractor can get through, but in your home garden they waste space and decrease yields. Start staggering your plants by planting in triangles and not in straight rows, and you'll gain an extra 15 percent yield of garden space.

This doesn't mean to position plants tightly, though, since crowding can have the opposite effect. In this method, you allow even more room for plants in which to grow, but the staggered planting method and the extra space provided will produce additional poundage. Try to gain a greater weight­yield per square foot, and not how many plants can be squeezed into a given area.

●- Up is always better: Wherever possible, I plan my garden so that plants grow vertically, rather than horizontally. This not only saves space, but it makes everything easier, from controlling diseases, to feeding and watering, to harvesting. Build supports and structures so that they are strong and rot-resistant. I ve been using the same supports for 15 years, and I expect they'll last another 15 years

●- Start early, finish late: It makes sense that if you had an extra month of growing season at the beginning of the season and an extra month at the end of the season, you'll have more harvest.

That s exactly what will happen when you stretch the season and start harvesting earlier and later in the season (even during winter), and through succession crop planting. I use a variety of methods to accomplish this, from using plastic cloches, Wall O Water devices, 'frost' repellant fabrics, late­season heavy mulching, and methods of warming the soil.

●- Select seeds and plants carefully: There was a time when miniature, dwarf or so called 'bush' varieties were more novelty than anything else.

That's not the case anymore. Seed developers have created remarkable plants that yield 'full' harvests from plants that take up very little space.

Some varieties fare better than others, and you ll need to experiment which ones produce the highest yield in your garden. Careful selection and usage of these special plants and seeds play an important role in making your garden a high-yield garden.

Raised beds are the fastest way to develop a deep, rich layer of fertile soil.

Original at the Connecticut Post

Easy Organics

Organic gardening is a simple, yet rewarding approach to maintaining human and planetary health. Mentally and physically, it improves the human condition by removing toxins from the diet, increasing the amount of fresh whole foods eaten daily and building a relationship to the natural world founded on a respectful knowledge that it is we who depend on the Earth to provide for our every need, not the other way around. When left to their own, nature's processes are quite simple and can easily be replicated in your yard and garden.

From the Charlotte Observer, 4 basic principals of organics:

• Be more observant. Your powers of observation are your most valuable gardening tool. That means spending time with the plants, studying how each individual is doing. When we're busy, days and weeks pass before we go out to see the plants. By that time, if something's going to fail, it's often beyond rescue. It's easier to remember if it's part of your daily schedule, such as your morning coffee time or evening cocktail hour or even right after you get home from work.

Even if your main purpose of gardening is to lower your food bills or provide healthier food, don't look at tending the garden as a chore. Approaching the garden as leisure time opens you up to experiencing the joys and wonder of a living eco-system, constantly transforming itself, an oasis in your busy world. Make it your "quiet time" or make it "family time", but make time! And Enjoy!

• Feed the soil. The foundation of organic gardening is based on maintaining microorganisms in your soil. They interact with plants to help them grow bigger, faster and produce more flowers and fruit. If you just apply commercial fertilizer to the soil, you feed the plant temporarily and deny the microbes. If you use good-quality organic fertilizers, you'll get better, more productive plants that resist insects and diseases.

If you acquire materials from around your community to help build and feed your soil, make sure you consider the original source. If you are getting your manure from "Farmer John", make sure he doesn't feed his animals antibiotics, hormones and the like; it defeats the "organic" principals. "Grass Fed" or "Pasture Raised" are the best choices. The Hippocratic oath speaks well to organics and sustainability:

"First, do no harm...."

• Water properly. This takes time, which is why a lot of people don't do it very well. If your soil is clay, it is slow to absorb water. These soils are quite fertile, but water seeps in slowly and much runs off the top. The result is that plants root near the surface, where the soil gets hottest in summer and dries out quickly. Water at a rate that the soil will absorb without runoff. If you water properly, you'll get a much deeper root system that is less vulnerable to stresses of drought and summer heat.

Water Rule #1: Ban Sprinklers and Hand-Held Nozzles! Water that you see flying through the air, is water that will evaporate sitting on the leaves of your plants, doing very little good to the roots where it must be utilized. Use drip hoses! You'll use far less water per hour keeping the pressure turned down low, (allowing time for absorption) and the water will be put to far better use! Don't have drip hoses and don't want to purchase them? The frugal gardener recommends buying a cap at the local hardware (about $1), use your favorite hammer and a small to medium sized nail and start pokin' holes! Raised beds are another great way to keep water where its most needed.

• Control weeds. Once certain weeds gain a foothold in the garden, they are hard to get rid of. Runner grasses, nut sedge and star thistle, as well as many others, produce deep roots that keep springing up no matter how often you remove the green parts. Established weeds can produce thousands of seeds per year. If you begin with the first flush of spring to stay on top of weeds, catching them before they become invasive or produce new seed, you'll save yourself a lot of grief later in the summer. For those problem rooters like bindweed and oxalis that come back year after year from a large network of underground roots, consider early applications of herbicide to reach the roots and wipe them out, hopefully for good.

I only included this because it was part of the original article. Personally, I don't believe in pulling weeds. I'll pull grass seedlings from my garden beds, but my theory is, just because I didn't plant it, doesn't mean its undesirable! Weeds are Natures flowers! So, unless it is an invasive, non-native species, I leave weeds to their business. I love Dandelions! Plus, with proper mulching and healthy soil, you'll see very few "weeds" in an organic garden.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How To Live It

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It

This book is everything the title suggests and is written by the most highly respected authority on sustainable living, the late John Seymour. A must have for any home library!

A New Venture

Thinking about Spring and planning ahead for a change.