What Will The Spill Kill? asks: Organic Gardening Questions?
I decided to go organic this year and I need a few tips. How do you keep the bugs off the plants. How can you fertilize them if it’s organic. Are there vegetables and fruits I can grow inside–if so, how do I pollinate them? Any advice would be nice.
Thank you in advance!!!
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Answer by Dianne S
Insecticidal soap is the best organic solution for keeping bugs off of plants. Jerry Baker has many books on homemade organic insecticides as well.
You fertilize with compost or manure when you go organic. Manure is what most farmers use and what has been used for centuries.
You really don’t need to worry at all about polination. Although I’m not sure what you can really successfully grown indoors without a lot of sunlight or grow lights. Polination is more of a fruit tree concern and you won’t be growing those indoors!
What do you think? Answer below!
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It is not easy to go full organic. There are products you can buy, but they can be expensive. For pest management, use cultural control, meaning physically inspect your crop and when you see bugs remove them from the plants, or use Remay cloth to cover the plants so bugs can’t get in it in the first place. If all that fails, you can use NEEM oil, which is an organic pesticide. You can buy compost and organic fertilizers such as animal manures, but may not know if the chicken/cow manures came from an organic production instead of a regular chicken/cow farm that maybe loaded with antibiotics and other things… I use a combination of methods to grow my garden. I use a slow release fertilizers,which is non-organic that helps a lot in the growing season. Anyway, growing your own food and knowing what you put in them is the most important thing, and it is a lot healthier than things you can buy from the supermarket.
Good luck and happy growing!
Organic bug spray:
2 tbsp vegetable oil, 4 hot peppers, 4 cloves garlic, 1L water
Combine all ingredients in blender and run on high 1 min or until liquefied
Allow to steep for 2hrs
Strain thoroughly
Transfer to spray bottle and apply to affected area daily until pests are under control
Alternative forms of pest control:
Interplanting: by planting certain types of plants together you can keep pests to a minimum. A pest that loves cukes for example but hates mint may ignore the cukes if there is mint right beside them.( google interplanting guide for plant-specific interplanting techniques)
Encouragement of beneficial insects (for example, buy a box of ladybugs and release them into your tomato patch if you have aphids– they’ll eat them up in a matter of days!)
You can grow many fruits & veggies inside but choose varieties carefully because many are sun-hungry. If you want to grow something indoors like tomatoes or cukes which love the sun you’ll need a grow lamp. You’ll also need to have a very good container mix. Simple potting soil will not provide all the components you need. Try looking up Mel’s mix, or try a combo of 10% each coco coir, perlite or vermiculite, sand, compost, and composted manure, and 50% bark fines (this is what I use and works great).
You will need to look it up individually depending on the type of plant but yes if your plants are indoors they may need some pollination help. This can range from shaking the plant lightly a couple times a day to sticking q-tips into the flowers one after another.
Organic fertilizers: manure, compost, vermicompost,bone meal, feather meal, lime, fish emulsion… to know how much of each to use the best thing to do is get a soil test so you don’t add, for example, too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorus.
The best thing you can do is start a compost today!!