Tips for Organic Gardening Newbies

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
March 11th, 2009
Filed in Garden Maintenance
Tags: composting, flowers, vegetables

On twitter this morning, one of the people I “follow” said something intriguing about the push for a Victory Garden on the White House lawn.  He said that he was worried that the current initiative for Victory Gardens 2.0 will end up causing lots of problems with herbicide/pesticide and fertilizer overuse because people don’t undertsand organic gardening, or even, well, gardening!  I hadn’t really thought about this victory garden push in that light, but after thinking about it, I can see why people would be concerned.

The only reason why I know as much as I do about gardening-the scientific stuff-is that I went to school for six years, ending with two degrees in horticulture.  Little did I know, Horticulture is taught mostly as a science, less as an art.  I have come to believe, firmly, that it is both.  I have written many times about how the scientific knowledge I gained from school and from books has helped me create a more beautiful, healthier and thus, more artistic, garden.

While I was slogging through biochemistry and organic chemistry, I was certainly thinking more about the art side of things.   (I have to confess, my brain retained NOT ONE molecule of organic chemistry.  I got a “B” and I can’t even tell you what it is, besides something involving carbon.  I think.  I remember more about biochemistry, because it was more about systems and processes and I like those.)  Today, I am glad to know about the science of horticulture, as well as the environmental impacts, the artistic importance and its place in the food supply.

Lots of new gardeners is a good thing, in my opinion.  I want to do my part to help gardening newbies-especially organic gardening newbies-get a good start for their own sake and for the sake of the environment.  At the risk of sounding like a keyed up, freaked out environmentalist, home gardeners can do a LOT of damage to their environment without even realizing it.  I want to just touch on a few points I have learned, either in school, in the field (actually gardening) or from keeping up on my reading, to help folks new to gardening and organic gardening be 1) not scared and 2) better stewards of the earth and 3) have good results.  These are my top five pieces of advice.  For what they’re worth.

Katie’s Top Five Tips for Successful Organic Gardening

Some of these are specific to organic gardening, and others are good tips for gardening in general.

• Don’t bite off more than you can chew.  This probably sounds like common sense.  In the world of gardening, I can assure you, it is not.  Especially now, when everyone is beyond tired of winter and just ready to see ANYTHING green, it is easy to buy too many plants, dig up too much ground and then burn out quickly.  Especially if you are new to gardening or vegetable gardening, start with a little plot-five feet by five feet, or the side of your house.  Grow that for a year and see how it goes.  The next year, you might not even want to dig up more ground.
  

  Katie's Back Garden in 2008

  I decided this year, instead of digging up more room for veggies, I would just re-purpose the gigantic bed in the back yard.  I didn’t think I could handle more garden than I already have.  My husband, on the other hand, was chomping at the bit to dig up tons more space.  I won the battle to delay, at least for now.  (The below picture is our strategy for this year.  You probably can’t really tell, but the area surrounding the patio is the vegetable area.  The boards are our “raised bed thingymajiggers.”  It is only MARCH, so give it a little to fill in!)

  

  Katie's Back Garden 2009

• READ THE LABEL.  Sorry for screaming in type, and for incessantly repeating myself, but I’m really sold on that piece of advice.  That is the best way to avoid what the twitter guy was worried about:  over-application of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides.  It doesn’t matter whether you are an organic gardener or a conventional gardener–if you over-apply any inputs to your garden, you will do damage to the environment.  Nutrients that are not used by plants flow from your back yard, out of the soil, into the groundwater, to lakes and streams and eventually to rivers and the ocean.  At every step of the way, this unnaturally high concentration of nutrients causes all kinds of problems.  Algal blooms, death of native species and destabilization due to both are just the beginning.  More is NOT better.  The best way to add or apply anything in your garden is to do it correctly.  If you are new, or don’t know how, read the label or consult a book.
• Go easy on the pesticides-whether organic or conventional.  I learned this from a real-world experience I had while working at Fort Ticonderoga.  The entire driveway in from the outside road to the fort is lined with maple trees.  My first summer in charge of the landscape, there was a major fungal problem that caused all of the leaves on the trees to fall off in about the beginning of August.  I’m not exaggerating when I say I woke up many nights worrying about the trees.  I had emails, voice mails and actual SNAIL MAIL from people asking what was wrong with the trees.  I had to write a story in the newsletter about it. There was no way we could have sprayed the trees.  It is a good thing we didn’t.  As I learned that summer, then had re-confirmed when I took pesticide training (more on that later), pests will maintain themselves pretty well if you leave them alone.  A population will increase to the point where it cannot sustain itself, whereupon it will crash and you will have several pest-free years.  (Or low-level pest years).  The population will gradually build up again.  It is a cycle.  If you treat for pests, you will kill beneficial organisms, too, and you will always have some level of pest problem.  The good guys are fine at taking care of the bad guys if you let them.
• Take a cooperative extension pesticide training class.  This also sounds very strange coming from an organic gardening blog.  However, if you have never had much formal training in horticulture the certification and re-certification classes are great sources of information, and they are usually low cost or free.  Most pesticide training classes teach integrated pest management, or IPM techniques, which is a holistic approach to gardening.  You will learn about plant systems, insects, and how to grow a garden that is partially pest-resistant.
• Avoid monocultures.  The only times I have had serious problems with insects or diseases is when I planted all of the same plant together, with no other plants interspersed, and without another grouping of the plant in another location.  Plants help each other.  (See the post on companion planting for more about that.)  They attract beneficial insects and repel harmful insects.  That is a good reason to interplant.  A good reason to plant two or three groupings of the same plant in different areas of the garden is that if one group gets eaten, you’ll still have the other.

So, that’s my 2 cents for what it is worth!  Go forth and garden!