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Hi I'm Tricia an organic gardener
Organic vegetable gardening is very rewarding
and whether you live in the countryside in the city or in the suburbs
you can enjoy home-grown vegetables
Today I'm at my friend Autumn's house and we're gonna start a brand new garden
If this is your first garden i recommended that you start small
the worst thing that can happen is that you bite off more than you can chew
Autumn has chosen this twenty-by-twenty space but if you only have five by ten
that's fine too
Site selection is important
you need a minimum of six hours of sunlight per day for vegetables
and preferably more
if you're not sure how much sun you get you can use one of these SunCalc
sunlight calculators
and be sure you've chosen the right spot
avoid snuggling your site up against tall trees their roots can affect the
vegetable growth
and if you do have trees be sure that you have a clear southern exposure
A very important consideration is your water source a hose bib
or some other way to connect your irrigation close by to your site
a major part of organic gardening is healthy rich soil
In order to know how to build your soil
a soil test is critical A soil test is going to tell you exactly what your
garden already has and what it needs
check our video on soil tests to learn how to take a good soil sample
The next step is soil preparation and you can prepare the soil
by either using a tiller
a broad fork or a digging fork
if you're soil is less compacted broad forking or using a digging
fork can be substituted for tilling
It really only needs to be done initially
once you've tilled or worked the soil with a fork it's time to
add some good ol organic compost which is teaming
with beneficial microbes
Next I'm going to build my soil beds by digging out the dirt from the pathways
and putting it on the bed until the bed is about six to eight inches in height
the next step is to grade the bed
and if you want to add some fertilizer per the soil test results
now's the time to do it
three to four foot wide beds are a better use of a home gardener space
to narrow rows like you would see on a farm
in addition wide beds give your plants roots more room to spread out
To prevent weeds from growing in the pathways you can put down cardboard or
newspaper
just put it down in the pathways and water it so it gets real heavy
make sure that the pieces of cardboard overlap
after wetting down your cardboard
just add about a two to three-inch layer of straw
water the whole garden area thoroughly
We've disturbed the soil so much that the weed seeds are gonna come to the
surface and germinate
While you're waiting for the weeds to germinate you can start setting up your
drip irrigation system
A couple of days later comeback
using either the Hori-Hori weeder rooter a stirrup hoe or a collinear hoe
take out any young weeds
repeat this process a couple more times before you plant
if you have deer rabbits or other wildlife i highly recommend a dear
fence
otherwise
all your hard work is going to be a donation to the local wildlife
this deer fencing is relatively inexpensive and easy to install
It's finally time to plant the certified organic vegetable starts and seeds I'm
planting these peas and they grow really tall so I'm going to stake them with the bamboo
and i'm planting them to the north of the garden
so that they don't shade out the other lower growing plants
like the radishes I'm going to plant from seed
Liquid fish and kelp are great fertilizers to help your little plants
thrive
They're often applied as a foliar spray so make sure you have a good sprayer with a fine tip
nozzle
So enjoy your little garden and grow organic for life!