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The Pleasures of Organic Gardening

© Deborah Turton

People often say to me, "I would love to plant some vegetables or flowers around my house. How do you do it, I never have the time." For me, gardening is a great pleasure, so I find the time. Anything you really enjoy, you will find the time for. So, if you're thinking about starting a garden, here are some thoughts to keep in mind.

I find it immensely relaxing, but not everybody does. After a long stressful day, there's nothing like walking through my garden areas. I can pick at weeds, watch the plants emerge and decide what else I want to buy. My back yard is very unfinished, but I still find it enjoyable to check out the plants I have put in. I moved 14 blueberry bushes this spring and 13 look like they made it. That's very satisfying and relaxing to me.

You have to be able to give up control. Organic gardeners can't control every aspect of the garden. They have to be willing to let nature take it's course. As an organic gardener, your job is to guide nature to do what you want. So, you can add appropriate flowers to attract beneficial insects, but you can't force them to move in. Even if you buy eggs of these insects, the adults may still decide to leave to find food elsewhere. Therefore, it helps if you can leave small areas of uncontrolled wildness for predatory insects to find food.

You meet the most fascinating creatures in an organic garden. We live near a stream and my neighbor has a pond. So we have lots of toads, salamanders, and dragonflies. The last are my favorite creatures. Dragonflies dart about and then swoop down for the kill. It makes me glad my kids are larger than dragonflies are. Toads just hang out - not exerting much energy, just enough to eat my bugs. I find them when I move mulch around. The toads much like it among those shredded leaves. My husband was moving rocks this spring and found a bunch of salamanders and snakes. They were just hanging out underneath the rocks waiting for it to warm up. Last fall when I weed whacked my backyard, (I ended up letting the weeds grow wild in half of my backyard. - I called it a cover crop at the time) I had insects, frogs, and snakes running wildly around. I did feel sorry for them, but I needed to clear the area so I could prepare it for my blueberry bushes. Slowly, but surely, I'll replace their lost habitat with something amenable to both them and me.