Organic Gardening Made Easy

Would you be more likely to grow your own foods if organic gardening, made easy for you, was more accessible? Here is your opportunity to learn simple ways of having an organic garden as well as reasons why you should have one. Enjoy the following interview with Don Rosenberg, author of No Green Thumb Required.

Author and Master Gardener Don Rosenberg

Master Gardener Don Rosenberg knows that busy families find organic gardening intimidating. That's why he developed his unique approach to gardening that anyone can follow. Even if you are short on space or working full time to support your family, you can enjoy a thriving organic garden that provides healthy produce.

Recently, LoveToKnow was able to speak with Don Rosenberg about his book and how his methods can help anyone have the garden they have always wanted but thought was just out of reach. Follow his tips and see what you can grow organically!

My claim to fame is "I'm a guy and I'm lazy." I want a productive garden, but don't want to do any more work than is absolutely necessary. It turns out that organic gardening is easier than gardening with chemicals. There are no nasty liquids to mix, sprays to measure, or bottles to clean up and store. Synthetic fertilizers need to be added all the time, whereas organic fertilizers feed the soil over a longer period.

Organic is good, but fresh is more important. Many vegetables lose 15 percent of their nutritional value per day, as well as their flavor. I advocate creating "kitchen gardens" – to be grown in your back yard and harvested just minutes before you use them. This means a smaller garden that's much easier to manage.

The whole concept of vegetable gardening is very intimidating. People want a garden, but conventional methods are a lot of work. They take a lot of space, a lot of time and a lot of knowledge. But the worst part is all the digging, tilling and weeding.

The standard approach is to find a spot for your garden, scrape off all the grass and weeds, dig down into your (compacted) soil, and till in a bunch of compost and fertilizer to make decent soil. The first problem is weeds – weed seeds can lie dormant for 20 to 50 years, just waiting to be exposed to sunlight. When you remove your grass and till your soil you end up with a very productive weed patch. Weeds grow faster than domesticated vegetables, so you have a problem that never ends. Every time you till again, you end up with more germinating weeds.

The second problem is your soil. Most new houses had their topsoil removed when they were first built, leaving only subsoil behind. It can take 50 to 100 years for subsoil to develop into topsoil, and it can take 5 to 10 years for a gardener to do it manually by tilling in compost every year.

Next comes the problem of fertility. Because your soil isn't very good, you need a lot of room for each plant. It's very common now to have big houses but tiny yards – very little room for even a small traditional 20 x 20 foot garden. Or you may have a big yard with lots of trees – not enough space with adequate sunlight.

Finally, there's the knowledge gap. Many people have grown up without the benefit of having a garden and they don't know what to plant or when to plant. They don't know the basics of how to plant seeds or how often to water. They're afraid that after they do all the work of setting up their garden, they'll just kill it!

My approach is to embrace my inner laziness. I want a productive, tasty garden, but I don't want all that work. Over the last 20 years, I've developed a simple system that's as simple as six words, Raised Beds, Weedless Soil, and Limited Space.

I build a series of wooden rails over the top of an existing lawn and fill it in with new soil. Either inexpensive potting mix or a blend of 75 percent compost and 25 percent river sand will do. No need for expensive potting mix with synthetic fertilizers added, or "organic" potting mix. Just level your rails, cover your grass with a few layers of newspaper, dump in your soil and add your own organic fertilizer (Plant-Tone is a common brand, worm castings are even better). There's no need to ever dig, till or weed again!

Because your soil is perfect from the very start, your plants are healthy, and healthy plants resist bugs and diseases naturally. So there's very little need for herbicides and pesticides. If you do have a problem, it's usually with a specific type of bug attacking a specific crop. There's almost always a simple, organic solution for each case.

"Limited Space" are the last two words. Because you may not have a lot of room in your yard you need to make your raised beds as efficient and productive as possible. I found a way to remember how to select the most productive plants. It's called "FRESNO," which is not a city in California! It stands for Fresh, Rare, Expensive, Space-saving, Nutritious and Ongoing harvest.

If you are going to go through the effort of building your own garden you might as well use varieties that taste better fresh, are rare varieties, are expensive in the stores, and use space wisely. I also want to grow nutritious vegetables and those that offer a longer harvest period. A good example of "anti-FRESNO" is iceberg lettuce. It has very little nutritional value, and when you pick it after two months you get a one-day harvest. A better crop is leaf lettuce, where you can harvest a leaf at a time from each of several plants and enjoy a harvest of seven or eight weeks! You can plant seeds more thickly and as the baby plants germinate and start to crowd each other, you can thin them with a pair of scissors and you have an early harvest of "locally grown, organic, baby leaf lettuce mix" - $7.99 a pound at the stores!

A good example of FRESNO is heirloom tomatoes – they are nutritious and taste better fresh. You can grow rare varieties; they are expensive to buy and are efficient with space and harvest time.

Don Rosenberg Organic Gardening Interview Continued

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