How to Grow an Organic Garden

grow an organic garden

It’s Spring!! It’s time for spring cleaning of the body, mind and spirit. And it’s also time to clean out your yard and gardens to prepare for the new season.

Have you ever wanted to grow your own fruit and vegetables in your own backyard?

It is super easy, a critical skill to know how to grow your own food and is actually very enjoyable to be outside in the warm summer air tending to something that will bring you such joy, nutrition and flavour in just a few short weeks.

Here is how to get started:

If you already have some garden space, move the soil around as well as you can with a hoe or a rototiller. This will break up the hard soil that has gotten hard over the winter months.

If you do not have a garden yet, choose a space in your yard that has the most sun possible and dig the layer of sod off the ground until you reach your desired space. Then dig the soil around, remove any large stones, rototill the soil or use a hoe to break up the hard soil so that the roots of the plants and seeds you will be planting can actually reach down and root themselves easily.

You can add compost or fresh top soil to the earth that you have just turned over to provide fresh nutrients for your plants to grow.

Choose a garden layout that will allow you to walk easily through your garden or be able to reach everywhere from being on the edge. I always plant my garden in rows because it makes it much easier for planting, weeding and harvesting. But some microgardens do well growing in pods rather than rows. It depends on how much space you have.

The easiest vegetables to grow from seed are carrots, beets, spinach, lettuce, kale and herbs. They are very hearty and produce decent crops with little tending.

However if your looking to make the most out of your garden, click here to read ‘Backyard Medicine – Grow Your Own Natural Remedies”, before choosing what to plant.

Once your soil is soft and you have chosen your seeds, make a shallow row, approximately 1” deep, for your seeds to drop into.

Plant your carrot seeds about 1” apart in the row, as you can imagine how much space each carrot needs to grow and expand to become full sized.

Beets need a little bit extra space because each beet seed will produce 4 beets.

For the lettuce, it depends on the type you are growing – leaf lettuce can be planted fairly close together because it grows just as leaves, but romaine lettuce will form into heads and needs a few inches of space.

The important thing is to keep in mind the amount of space the vegetables need to become full sized (like you would find at the grocery store) and give them that much space to grow.

Once you plant the seeds, cover them with dirt and pack the dirt lightly. You can water them every day until they start to sprout and then keep watching them. Once you can see the actual rows forming, then you can begin to see what each of the plants look like and you can decipher the vegetables you want growing from the weeds that will also pop up!!

Pull out the weeds so their roots don’t crowd out your vegetables’ roots and keep watering them regularly throughout their growing season.

You can also plant already growing vegetables such as tomatoes, because they need a longer growing season than our climate allows for. By purchasing tomato plants that are already well established, you can enjoy their fruits in mid-late August. This is the same for pepper plants, but they are often difficult to grow!! (Or at least I don’t seem to have much luck with them!!)

Good luck with your garden adventures, and be sure to share this hobby with your children. There is no better way to spend the summer months than being outside and enjoying time with Mother Nature.

Don’t Pull Out That Weed! All About The Cancer Fighting Medicine That’s Growing in Your Yard

Dandelions fight cancer

There is an old shaman’s tale that when you are in the Amazon jungle, and you are bitten by a bug, or a snake or some other equally scary incident, the antidote is always within arm’s reach.

Nature provides the healing remedy at the very location you need it most.

This may be a fair ideal when you are in such a densely populated area of herbs, plants and insects as the Amazon jungle, but what if the principle can be applied elsewhere?

What if you looked out into your backyard and realized that the very dandelions that you spend so much time trying to rid from your yard actually provide immense healing properties!

If this is true, maybe Mother Nature is onto something – she provides abundant sources of healing if only we know what to look for.

The Truth About Cancer website is an authority on all things cancer-related, most especially known for natural healing remedies and prevention principles.

They are reporting that dandelions are actually a potent cancer fighting medicine that is loaded with vitamins and minerals.

There are reports of people pulling out the dandelions, drying the roots and grinding it into an edible powder that boosts the immune system to help fight off cancer.

Currently, clinical trials are underway to study how dandelion root extract can help to treat blood-related cancers including lymphoma and leukemia.

Additionally, researchers from Windsor Regional Cancer Centre in Ontario are also in the midst of a study on dandelion root extract on a group of 30 patients with end-stage blood related cancers. So their findings will be very interesting to learn about.

How Can You Incorporate More Dandelions Into Your Diet?

For starters, you can pick dandelion leaves from your yard and add them to salads or juice them with other greens. Be sure you are picking leaves that have not been sprayed with pesticides or that you dogs may have been near. Or you can purchase dandelion greens at your local grocery store!

You can also make dandelion tea by pouring hot water over the greens and flowers and steeping for 10 minutes. And you can incorporate dandelion greens and flowers into your regular salads.

My favourite way to use dandelion greens? Juicing!!

I found huge dandelion greens at the grocery store this week (literally 18 inches tall) and added them to our weekly green juice regimen.

Dandelion Green Juice: (use as many organic options as you can)

2 English Cucumbers
4 zucchini
1 head celery
1 large bunch Bok Choy
1 large bunch Dandelion Greens
3 lemons (Just peel and put the whole lemon with pith through the juicer!)
3 Granny Smith Apples (sliced in half and cored)

Enjoy!

With Sources From:

https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/cancer-fighting-medicine-in-your-yard/