Growth Control for Efficient Gardening of Vegetables
A good garden aficionado must know that cultivation or weeding is effective for growth control. Weeds are your garden's most persistent and cloying enemy. You need to be able to know how to handle weeds in order to foster growth control for your organic garden. If you let weeds take over, they will completely obliterate your capacity to yield a rich number of vegetables.
They are the number one stealer of nutrients, sunlight and revenue for farmers, so the earlier you try to eliminate them, the better will it be for your gardening. This can eat up your time to such extremes at certain seasons, but monitoring weeds and eliminating them is definitely worth your time and effort.
Weeds are usually much harder to remove when they have matured. So it might require you a keen observing eye to really check out and inspect your garden for the earliest appearances of these culprits. Cultivating your soil regularly in the garden will help eliminate the younger weeds. Once you let those young weeds take hold and be firmly established in the garden, it will become a more herculean task to try to remove them from your garden.
Seasons also affect the appearance of weeds. Warm-season and cool-season weeds proliferate at different times of the year, and it will be your advantage to recognize which weeds are in season so you can more easily expect them in your garden and prepare your anti-weed arsenal more effectively. Some of the weed seeds may also lie in your garden, so make sure that you are able to cultivate your soil properly to remove them as well.
Make sure that your ground remains filled up with the good stuff. If you leave any portion idle or bare, the weeds are more likely to secure that area for their growth. If you are unable to fill the entire area with plant outgrowths, at least have a good cover to keep the weeds from invading your plant territory.
In the case where weeds have already grown when you discovered them, chopping them off from the ground is the most efficient way to remove them. Some of these weeds may cease to be removed, and will not stop even when you cut them down. But repetitive cutting down of those weeds will help eliminate them for good after some time.
The use of herbicides and pesticides is also advised, but it is not entirely necessary when you are able to do good cultivation of your land. The pesticides and herbicides, especially the commercially available ones, may prove to have other harmful effects. It may also pose as a threat to other useful organisms living in your garden. In any case, when you are presented with a huge weed problem, you may use herbicides and pesticides but only sparingly.
Mulching and composting are also good ways to help maintain the soil and ward off the weeds. Ultimately, you will not have to encounter huge problems in weed management if from the start, you are able to keep them from thriving in your garden in the first place.
If you are really consistent in digging up your space, you will have made the most out of your vegetables' garden and have exercised true growth control against weeds that can steal, kill and destroy your organic garden.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ab481f35-8234-4776-a2c9-6f67329258ed)
Sustainable Organic Vegetable Gardening With Organic Matter
Sustainable organic vegetable gardening can only happen if people know how to use and prepare organic matter.
This is because it improves the soil and prevents it from compacting and crusting. It increases the water’s holding ability so earthworms and other microorganisms can aerate the soil and it slows down erosion and in later stages of decay so that organic matter is able to release nitrogen and other nutrients which help the crops grow.
Such a technique is old but is now making a come back because the conventional method of using synthetic materials like fertilizer and pesticides have ruined the soil and depleted it or organic matter so this cannot be used for replanting.
So where do we get this organic matter? Believe it or not, the best form of organic matter comes from animal manure. The fresher the better because you can apply this directly to the soil but this should only be done in the fall and plowed down to give it adequate time for sufficient breakdown and ammonia to release before the planting season begins.
If you don’t have access to fresh animal manure, you can use the dried version that is being sold in nurseries and garden stores.
For those who don’t to use manure, you can use compost instead. This can be made from lawn clippings, leaves, food waste and other plant materials. It is cheap but its nutrient content is very low.
There is another kind of manure better known as green manure You don’t use any waste by animals here but rather growing a cover crop in your garden and then plowing it under so you are adding organic matter to the soil. The best way to maximize this is for you not to use the garden for one season.
You can also seed the green manure in the fall and then turn it under with a plow or a large tiller in the early spring. That way, you can use your garden normally while at the same time building up the soil.
Annual ryegrass is a good example for green manuring and covering. THIs should be seeded 1 to 2 feet per 1,000 square feet. If this is not available, you can use seed rye or wheat and place it 3 to 4 feet per 1,000 square feet. This helps prevent weeds from growing and in order for this to be effective, wait at least 2 weeks before you start planting.
Sewage sludge is also a good source of organic matter. There are two types namely digested sludge and dried activated sludge.
The first is relatively low quality. It contains from 1 to 3 percent of nitrogen and should only be applied during the fall. But you should be careful when you use it because it sometimes contain metal ions that are not good to use on vegetable gardens.
The second which is the dried activated sludge has been separated from coarse solids, inoculated with microorganisms and aerated. This is better than the other one because it is filtered, dried in kilns and screened. It contains 5 to 6 percent of nitrogen and 5 to 7 pounds can cover an area of 100 square feet.
Take note that these two types are different from raw sewage. That being said, never use that to garden any soil.
Sustainable organic vegetable gardening can only happen with organic matter. Now that you know this, choose from manure, compost or sludge.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=14f8f9de-a20a-4316-bb2f-e4a3990c1211)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
