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Planning an Organic Garden

© Deborah Turton

Planning an organic is slightly different from planning a garden that depends on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. You'll want to design your organic garden to encourage nature to take care of the problems. If you already have a garden, but want to switch to organic gardening, you'll need to change your garden slightly. If you're just starting your garden, you can design the organic features right in. I'll be discussing what to include in the organic garden, but not how to create a beautiful garden. I'll leave the garden designing to Kirk Johnson and his columns about garden design.

Let There Be Light First things first, you need to know how much sunlight you have. Plants that receive too much or too little sun are more stressed. For flowers, you just need to know whether you will be planting in full sun, partial sun or shade, and pick your flowers appropriately. For vegetable gardening, most vegetables need at least 6 hours of sun a day.

So, how do you tell how many hours of sun you have. Well, go out on a sunny day and check. You'll need a drawing of your yard and a day when you'll be home. Every hour, take a walk around the yard and write down where it is sunny and where it is shady. At the end of the day, count up the hours it was sunny in each area of your yard. I would do this when your trees have leaves. I ended up planting my garden in the front because that was the only place with enough light.

Easy Access Organic gardens should be close to the house or along a path you frequent. You'll be more likely to check your garden for problems this way. Because my garden is on the way to the mailbox, I check my garden when I check my mail. Even if you don't do anything in the garden at that moment, you can make a mental note to take care of the problem later.

Inviting Your Friends No, I don't mean letting the neighbors pick all your produce. I mean inviting the neighborhood pest patrol. As an organic gardener, you'll depend on beneficial animals to eliminate pests. Therefore, you need to include homes for the pest patrol. In flower gardens, you can pick your flowers to attract beneficial creatures. In your vegetable garden, you need to include room among your vegetables for flowers. I just started my current garden this year. I planted fennel and dill among my vegetables. For every 4 feet of vegetables, I've left about 1-2 feet in which to plant flowers . I've been slowly adding plants that attract beneficial insects to these areas.

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