Finally, An Easy to Understand System That Teaches You Everything You Need to Know About Organic Gardening Without Having to Buy Expensive Tools or Fancy Equipment


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Spring is already here again its garden planting time. It's time to start thinking about getting the garden ready to plant.  Having a garden can be a lot of fun and rewarding as you plant  the seedling and watch them grow.

But first you need to plan where and what your garden spot is going to look like, and if it the best place for the garden. People sometimes think that they have to have a really big garden. But just remember the larger the garden the more work is going to be involved with it. What I have found that many people start out great with a large garden, but then it becomes to large for them to handle effectively.

If you are starting your first garden think about a smaller garden, then you can always enlarge the garden area if you want to. Remember the larger the garden the more work it is going to take to stay up with it. Most of the time first time gardener's should start out with an area of no more than around 150 sq. ft area. This So unless you are planning to sell the vegetables.

Usually 150 sq ft are is just about right for a family. It is useful to know  your  climate zone and  what type of  plants grow best in your area.



In West Texas you can plant two different gardens each year, depending on what your are planting. The weather is very nice for growing for most of the year. Keeping up the weather forecast is very helpful in knowing ahead of time when a frost or freeze may damage or kill your plants.

One thing is very helpful to know is to find out what the soil is like in your area, whether it is sandy soil, if there a lot of clay mixed in it, or if it is mostly clay.

One way to find out what type of soil you have is to go to your Cooperative or County Extension agent, and ask for some sample bags, they come with instructions for your area.

You will gather some solid from different places on your property and fill the bags, seal them, and mail them back to where they will be analyzed and a report will be sent to you in a couple of weeks. This report will tell you what your soil is made up with. If you don't understand the report don't feel bad. Just take the report to the County Extension Agent and he/she can break it down for you. Because clay is a tightly packed soil, it holds moisture for a long time. Where as sandy soil is loose and lets the water run right through it. Which means that if you soil is sandy, you will have to water more often, unless you get a lot of rain, which we usually don't.

An easy way to test your soil is to take some in your hand and squeeze it. If it packs together then it's usually pretty much clay. But if it will not pack and stay packed is a sandy soil. You can do this test when you break the ground for your garden. There is a third type of soil called loam, it will pack together, but shatter easily if move around or tap with your finger. The perfect soil would be a mixture of all three soils. But if not, then you are going to have to mix in an amendment, called compost or fertilizer or other materials into the soil, to get it ready for planting.

You also need to find out what your pH is in your soil, the report will tell this information. You can also buy an inexpensive pH meter at any garden supply store, just put it in the ground and it will tell you what the pH level in the soil is. 

• 1 is a low pH level.
• 14 is a high pH level.
• 7 being a neutral pH level. 

If you are still lost on the pH thing, then go back to the County or Cooperative Extension Agent, he should be able to tell you what your soil will need.  You can look in the phone  book to find the number of your local  County or Cooperative Extension Agent.

Once you know the pH of the soil you can add the amendments that it needs, such as compost, fertilizer, composted manure, peat moss, Lime, Sulfur, leaf mold,  sawdust, (but caution with sawdust make sure that there is no cuttings from wood that has preservatives with CCA which turns the wood green in color, or stain, or polyurethane,  or paint, paint can and does contain lead, which could leech into the soil and ultimately into the plants themselves.)

You can buy organic fertilizer at any garden center. It is best to do this in the late fall months so that the amendments have time to mellow out in the soil and do what they best. Which is turn ordinary soil into extraordinary soil, capable of growing anything.

In the winter months you can start your composting by raking all of ther grass clippings, leaves, sticks, banana peels, coffee grounds, tea grounds, stickers, weeds, wood chips, fom the wood being chopped for the fire place or barbeque pit, lettuce leaf, cabbage, or any other organic materials into
your compost pile, (DO NOT USE dog or cat manure, in your compost pile, or any manure that the animal consumes meat, grease). Grease will putrefy in the compost, you can use cow, horse, sheep, goat, llama, chicken, etc.)

Be careful with chicken manure, because it a HOT fertilizer, what I mean by HOT, is that it is twice as rich as cow manure. Also you can buy enzymes at the garden center to use in the compost pile to speed up the break down of the plant material.  Just gather all these items into a pile, water regularly and turn the pile over about once a week for about six weeks, the compost will trap the heat from the sun and will break down the plants into usable organic fertilizer. It can't get any better than this to use in your garden because you don't have to worry about chemicals leeching into the soil, and it  makes a great compost material for the garden.

The best time to start your compost pile is in the spring when you start your mowing. Instead of leaving the cuttings where they fall, which is alright also. But too much cuttings on your lawn can suffocate your lawn. Rake those clippings up and put them into the compost pile accomplishes two things, it loosens the soil so the grass can get air and moisture down to the roots, but also it’s free compost material.

I don’t anyone that doesn’t like free stuff.


So until next time happy Gardening Spring is already here again.
Keep your hands dirty and your mind clean

Jesse Auburg  Online Marketing  Entrepreneur
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