If you want to grow your own fruit and vegetables in the most natural way without the aid of artificial chemicals for fertilising or for weed and pest control, then it’s necessary to provide the correct environment for healthy plants to sustain normal growth and withstand attack from disease and pests. Our Jane - who has a fantastic kitchen garden at her cottage - has put together a few tips to help you get started with basic organic gardening of your veg patch.
Beef up your growing beds with homemade compost, leaf mould and manure. A compost bin, or a wormery, are essential tools for the organic gardener. If you are lucky enough to lay your hands on pallets you can make your own open wooden compost bin. You will need three bays to make it work properly. One will be composted, one will be breaking down and the third one will be the one in current use. It is useful to have a closed compost bin if you have material you need to break down faster, because it will generates heat more quickly. it also looks tidier and contain smells better. If you can’t make your own compost bin, you can buy one of the many wood or plastic varieties on offer.
A compost heap needs to be aerobic (have oxygen circulating) so do not put on a mass of grass clippings or it will result in an anaerobic, smelly mess. Fork it over from time to time to introduce air. Alternatively, consider a tumbling composter to help you rotate your compost, this keeps it aerated to produce compost much faster than usual. When adding material to your heap, build up layers using twiggy material from your garden shredder, dry material and wet stuff like grass clippings and organic kitchen waste. Dry material could be shredded paper or card (even old clothes made from pure cotton or wool will eventually rot ) and should be added in small quantities. You can buy compost accelerator but natural accelerators (things which rot quickly and generate heat) are nettle tops, comfrey, seaweed (if you live near the coast), chicken bedding and waste from your hens . Male urine is a traditional recommendation for adding nitrogen to the heap! Do not add the flowering tops or roots of plants and wash the salt off the seaweed. Never put cooked or raw meat on the heap as it will smell terrible, attract different bacteria and certainly attract vermin. Make leaf mould for next year by filling Love ‘em and Leave’em jute sacks with fallen leaves in the Autumn, leave them somewhere out of the way to rot down and they will be ready to put on your beds in early summer.
Kitchen waste can also be put into a wormery. The worms are not the common sort found in your garden but are specially bred - usually tiger worms or brandlings. The wormery will produce compost and will also provide a liquid which must be drawn off regularly and when diluted will make a feed for the plants.
The end result of your composting from a heap, bin or womery should be a crumbly brown mixture with a nice earthy smell, which can be used to both improve the structure and nourish the soil in your vegetable garden ready for next years crops. It can also be used elsewhere in the garden, as a top dressing or mulch around plants, or put in the bottom of the planting hole to nourish roots.
Keep weeds down by hoeing regularly so your plants do not have to compete for nourishment and water.
Fit water butts to all your down pipes and keep plants well watered with natural rainwater, saves using drinking-quality water resources too.
Rotate your crops so that there is no build up of a particular disease, for example the chances of getting onion rot (a fungus that can live for as long as 15 years in the soil) is minimised by changing the crops grown in the same soil every year.
Divide your plot into sections, four is ideal, and rotate your crops yearly. Plant vegetables with a leafy green top growth such as cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli (brassicas) in one section, root crops such as carrots, parsnips and potatoes in another,use a third section for peas, beans (legumes) and finally a fourth section for onions, chives, garlic (alliums) sweetcorn, courgettes, tomatoes and salad.
Another advantage of crop rotation is the benefit to the soil, for example plants such as peas and beans will put nitrogen back into the soil from nodules on the roots. Cut off the top growth after harvesting and add to the compost heap but leave the roots to add their nitrogen to the ground ready to nourish the plants which grow in the same patch next year – it’s perfect for cauliflower and cabbage growth so add these vegetables to that bed the following season. And so on.
Protect your plants from pests such as rabbits, pigeons or carrot fly with netting, mesh tunnels or raised beds. Many pests that attack your plants have natural enemies. To attract birds, bees, lacewings, and ladybirds put up bird feeders and nesting boxes, insect habitats and get a hedgehog house if you have a problem with slugs! If hedgehogs aren’t a solution for you, try other natural methods. Patrol the slugs’ favourite plants at night with your torch and pick the pests off, put them in a bucket and dispose of them. Alternatively, use biological controls such as nematodes to control the slugs, also useful for vine weevil and chafer grubs.
Try companion planting such as rows of poached egg plant, marigolds, nasturtiums, rosemary, sage or lavender between or round your crops to attract the beneficial insects or mask the smell of plants from predators. There are plenty of ideas, they’re not foolproof deterrents but they are safe to use! Here are just a few:
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Planting onions between carrots is thought to fool the carrot fly by masking the smell of carrots, or grow next to leeks for the same effect.
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Try the herb sage by carrots and cabbages
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Another plant to use by cabbages is nasturtium, caterpillars seem to prefer the
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Plant french marigolds by tomatoes to deter aphids.
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Chervil, coriander and garlic deter aphids from lettuces.
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Dill attracts aphid-eating hoverflies, so grow some in your veg patch even if you don’t like the taste yourself.
The net result is you might have to wash a few extra bugs off your produce before eating it, but otherwise you can be confident of consuming natural goodness only!