Organic gardeners, I need your help please!

[Govtgirl]

Ok, I never thought in a million years I would give a hoot about gardening and landscaping, but my husband and I bought a cute 1950's house a few years ago with an awful yard, and I've since gotten the urge to make it all-out adorable!

I've been working on it for 3 years, and now I'm going to take the plunge and get a dual-chamber composter (I'm SO excited!) to take care of all the yard debris I'm accumulating, so I know pretty soon I'm going to have a lot of nice compost to use, which will really help things come along.

I would like to do as much as I can organically, that just makes sense to me, but it is all so confusing about which products to use. Should I stick with the Hollytone, Plantone, etc kind, or do I mix it up with other products like Osmocote? I see all these recipes for stuff to put down on the lawn, flowers, etc, and I understand they all have different needs, but do I need to mix up recipes?? I like to garden as a stress-reliever, not make more stress about which products to use, or feel like I'm "cooking" in the yard with all the different "2 cups of this, 10 oz of that" stuff.

If anyone has any helpful hints about what they do, I would very much appreciate it. I'm all ready to be product-line loyal, so if there's something out there that's dummy-proof, I'm all ears! Thanks!

 

[Gayle]

I'm a fan of keeping simple. Good old compost is your best bet as a fertilizer/soil additive. If you feel you need to add something because of a particular plant's needs, then I like "Tone" products (Hollytone, GardenTone, TomatoTone, etc).

The various recipes for EVERYTHING can make you go crazy!

Organic Gardening magazine can be a pretty decent resource for stuff.

 

[Beavs]

I second Gayle's advice!

 

[SirenSongWoman]

I just wanted to say I know nothing about gardening, organic or otherwise, but find the subject fascinating because, due to expense, I'm definitely looking to start growing my own produce next summer. Especially red bell pepper, which is ridiculous ($) but which I can't live without.

 

[kathryn]

I third Gayle's advice!

A couple of things that could be added : a solution of Epsom salts can help some plants resist disease (the instructions and proportions are usually on the package of ES).

Earthworm castings ('poop'!) are an excellent addition to compost and/or the garden. If you have an earthworm composter, you'll have both. Or you could buy the castings. Or you could buy some earthworms and make a nice leaf composter (worms LOVE a leaf pile) and have a great batch of compost at the end of the season. (An easy leaf composter is to take some chicken wire and make a tube out of it, fastening to the ground with ground staples, then just toss the leaves in).

 

[Govtgirl]

Thanks... I like Gayle's and everyone's responses: keep it simple! The last thing I want is more stress in my life, fooling around with 20 different recipes for each and every plant. I'm at the end of a 2-week vacation to stay home, dig around in the garden, and basically let office life go, and I don't want things complicated!