Organic Essentials

June 1998

The organic garden

Enough of lofty discussions about organic agriculture! Enough of field crops for other people! What about your own food… from your own garden?

Everyone knows that your own food tastes the best, looks the best and provides the best nutrition. The home garden supports several basic organic principals: self-sufficiency, reduced cost of food, reduced input costs and energy consumption, eating food grown close to home, reduced processing, etc.

Organic agriculture holds the same promises and challenges for the 1000 acre farm as it does for the 10’*10’ home garden. But the garden provides the best opportunity to learn on a small scale with low risks and direct results. Let us talk a stroll through some organic gardens of Eastern Ontario.

In the spring newsletter of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, Hubert Earl of Addison writes:

• use tomato cages or stakes to keep tomatoes erect, along with a thick mulch of hay or grass clippings to prevent verticillium wilt (black leaf splotches); mulch helps retain moisture and eliminate weeding (moisture may be at a premium this summer).
• use marigolds to mark your rows and divisions within the rows - marigolds deter nematodes and add colour contrast in the garden.
• deter cutworms and onion maggots by sprinkling wood ashes around transplants and in the row trenches before planting radishes or onion sets.
• plant borage (herb) around plants dependant upon insect pollination - the blue flowers of borage attract bees and will encourage the bees to pollinate the flowers on neighbouring plants; works well with squash, pumpkins and cucumber.

Canadian Organic Growers publish a Reference Series, a collection of handy guides for organic gardening, lawn care and farming. A few hints can be gleaned from their material:

• The Colorado potato beetle is relatively easy to control in the home garden. The adults emerge from the soil in late spring with the first potato sprouts. Collect them by hand to prevent them from laying eggs - it is the larvae that do the most damage to the leaves. Inspect the underside of leaves for bright orange clusters of eggs and destroy them by simply rubbing them against the leaf. And if a few larvae do survive, hand pick them as well.
• The best defense against pests is a good offense. A healthy plant can better tolerate or rebound from many types if insect attacks. And this depends on good soil fertility, good sunlight, and well drained soil.
• Companion planting and inter-planting with diverse colours, shapes and odours can help reduce an insect attack. Some odours repel certain insects while other attract predator insects.
• Encourage predator and parasitic insects. Do not use a broad spectrum pesticide as this will also eliminate beneficial insects who are actually trying to help you. The parasitic insects will lay their eggs and infest other insects or their larvae.
• You can trap slugs and snails with a shallow container placed in the soil and filled with a water/malt/sugar mixture or with beer. Empty the traps daily.
• Crop rotation is important in breaking the reproductive cycle of many insects, especially the less mobile soil-borne diseases. Also remove the vegetable refuse from the garden and compost it to reduce the over-wintering success of some insects.

A contribution by Tom Manley

President of Homestead Organics

 

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