Talking About Green

When it comes to organic gardening there are several issues that you have to consider. The first one of these is what kind of goal you want to set. If you don’t know where you’re going you’ll have a very hard time getting there, and that’s true of almost anything.

First, make sure that you understand what your goal is. If you want to build a huge garden that can feed your family you’ll obviously be doing things differently than if you want to have a small area in the front for curb appeal. Maybe you want both, but you also have to think about the time constraints that you have and whether you are capable of spending the kind of time that you want to on the garden of your dreams.

Once you’ve finished outlining your goals you can start working on where you’re going to be planting your garden. What you want and how much you want to grow will have a lot to do with where you’ll put your garden, so take your time and pay attention to how much sun the spot gets and other issues that might be important.

Then you can pick a spot for it. Selecting a site is sometimes one of the most difficult things to do, but if you have a good goal in mind you should be alright at picking a site out, too. Some sites get more sun than others, so you’ll need to pay attention to that and make sure that you don’t plant things where they won’t get the kind of light that they need.

With the soil prepared, you’re ready to select the plants that you’ll be putting into it. Your local nursery can help you with that, and you should know what to look for, as well. You don’t want plants that show any kind of disease or parasite, so look for discoloration, damage to the leaves and stems, and other problems that you’ll want to avoid.

You can’t always avoid all of the issues that you see with plants, but you can avoid most of them by paying close attention to any plant that you’re going to bring home. Most things show up and aren’t ‘in hiding’ where they will only crop up later. If a plant doesn’t look good and healthy to you, it’s best to avoid it and go on to something else.

Make sure that you examine the plants, though, and that they don’t have any visible problems with mites, disease, or other issues. It’s usually pretty easy to tell whether that’s the case or not, though, if you pay attention to the plants you’re picking up.

The plants that you finally bring home should be watered heavily when they arrive, even if you’re going to be planting them right away. The shock of transplanting them is lessened that way and a moist root ball is the best choice during planting.

Labeling the plants are important, too, because you don’t want to forget what you planted where. If a plant dies you can see which one you lost and replace it. If some plants do better than others, you might want to adjust your garden the next year by growing more of a certain type of plant or by changing the soil composition.