Unless you garden in a temperate or tropical zone you may be one of those unfortunates who simply can’t get enough of gardening. The calender may state exactly when spring, summer, autumn and winter begin but we know that don’t mean Jack! Spring time in the Carolinas, Texas and Kansas is quite a bit different than it is in Montana, Maine and Michigan. Only the Northerner can explain the horror of a blizzard dropping an incredible 8-12 inches of snow on the first day of spring. Good-bye, Crocus! We’ll see you when the snow melts.

The short growing season is the culprit and a sad business it is indeed, a nasty thorn in our sides, in fact. Because of it we northern gardeners will do just about anything to extend it. Therefore, we shall discuss the many ways the sufferers of the short growing season have discovered, invented and created to lengthen the way-too-short growing season.

Before you will start with composting, you need to select which compost bin to use. Your choice must be based on what kind of compost to make such as newspapers, grass clippings, food leftovers, or perhaps a mixture of all.

Your choice of a compost bin will also be dependent on where you are planning to compost, either indoor or outdoor and also on what purpose why you make a compost, is it only for a hobby or for any full sized garden? To support you with these factors, below are the five items to follow.

First, get a measuring tape and get the width, height and length of the place where you plan to make the compost bin. You've got to take into account the height particularly if you are going for an expandable style of tumbler.

Vermiculture or vermicomposting comes from the Latin term vermis, meaning worms. Vermicomposting employs earthworms to change organic waste material into high quality compost. Vermicomposting changes many types of different kitchen waste into a into a nutrient-rich fertilizer for your garden.

Vermicompost, or vermiculture, most often uses two species of worms, red wigglers or red earthworms, which are rarely found in soil and are adapted to the special conditions in rotting vegetation, compost and manure piles.

Some of the benefits of Vermicomposting include:

The colder weather is upon us and the question being asked is, "What should I do with my organic garden in the winter." "How do I keep my organic garden in shape during the winter months"? "Growing a Vegetable Garden in Winter?" Follow along to find out your winter organic gardening questions with the Friday's Organic Gardening Around The Web segment.

"There are two things that determine your success as an organic gardener - soil and weather. You can change soil; you cannot change weather.

How cold it gets in Winter and how hot it gets in Summer can help you predict whether a particular plant struggles or thrives in your garden... Weather Basics for Organic Gardeners.

Don't you just love that lovely soft blanket of white that undulates over your lawn and garden plots? Doesn't it just bring winter joy to your soul?

Okay, maybe not. Maybe you're one of the people who sees winter as a long season before the only real important season comes along. You call the good season "Growing Season."

In either case, there is plenty you can do for your garden now, in the winter conditions many of us find ourselves in, that will help your garden get a head start in the Spring.

COMPOST

Caring for your lawn in an organic manner can be much easier than you might think. And when you implement an organic care system for your lawn, you can not only keep your lawn healthy, you can also avoid spreading toxic chemicals that are often found in other lawn care mixes and sprays. There are just a few simple changes you’ll need to make in order to care for your lawn in a more earth friendly manner.

Many times you’ll see your neighbors watering their lawns in the morning and the evening. However, this is actually something that does not benefit your lawn in the least. If you water more infrequently, this will encourage the grass roots to dig deeper into the soil, helping the grass to better establish itself deeper than the roots of the weeds. This will give the grass more moisture from deeper soil, while the weeds will naturally die out due to a lack of water nearer the top of the soil.

I have never seen the sense in spending hundreds of dollars on composting equipment when the best techniques require a minimal investment . If we are as similar as I believe we are, you plainly don't have the assets to go about composting this way...

...But what if I could tell you there was an trouble-free, inexpensive, very valuable option at your disposal?

The method I use by design includes something you should be using in any practice you employ: straw bales.

If you have any straw bales handy, you can use them to make a very efficient compost bin. In case you don't have some bales laying around they are very inexpensive and a terrific resource that you should purchase anyway. Here is how I make the most of the straw to produce a simple compost bin.

Every Friday we will be adding a post to our Organic Gardening Tips blog called "Friday's Organic Gardening Around The Web." We will have a new topic each week for the Friday feature from various sources around the Internet.

We subscribed to many different organic gardening newsletters and gardening feeds, plus our daily web surfing provides us with plenty of gardening information that we feel will be helpful to others.

Row covers will be the feature subject in our first "Friday's Organic Gardening Around The Web."

Those of us who live in the warmer regions of our country have the advantage of creating fall vegetable gardens and that would include turnips, spinach, Chinese cabbage, chard, rutabagas, cauliflower, radishes, carrots, onions, cabbage, mustard, broccoli, lettuce, beets, kohlrabi, bush beans and snap beans.

That’s quite a variety of good food to be putting on your table during the winter and one of the secrets to planting a fall garden is to plan it in the spring when you are buying the seeds for your spring and summer plantings because you will indeed need the seeds and many times it is almost impossible to pick up seeds at your local garden supply store in the fall.

Employing worms in organic gardening is wonderful for aerating the soil, keeping the soil active and loose, and aiding with composting.

A good fertilizer or a good compost is worm castings, which is the feces from the worms, plus the worms themselves. It's really great stuff.

What we have done in lawns in the past, is when we have aerated, we have actually taken the worms physically and kind of thrown them out on the lawn getting them to go within the ground. We use products like Medina Soil Activator, molasses, and seaweed, this is what feeds them and keeps them going. That is not exactly what they all do but that is part of what the process does and they help keep the soil alive and loose by the worms being active.

Keeping your plants healthy in your garden can sometimes require a bit more than simply watering them and ensuring that you’ve given them adequate sunlight and spacing. There are diseases that will sometimes infect your plants, and can cause severe damage to your crops. But when you are trying to maintain an organic garden, you may find yourself at a loss when it comes to controlling and preventing disease. Here are a few tips that should get you on a good start.

Good Living Conditions

Ensure that your plants are living in the most ideal conditions possible. While it may not be the be-all and end-all of keeping your garden disease free, you want to ensure that they’re properly watered, have enough sunlight and are planted with enough space to promote circulation of air.

Does the sound of the NFL or talks of the NHL season get you bummed out because that also spells the end of the vegetable gardening season? Well don't let it. You may not be able to grow tomatoes and peppers in the cooler months but there are plenty of crops you can grow, and also means by which to extend their growth right into winter.

There are so many varieties of vegetables that you can plant when the temperatures drop that you can literally be shocked and will invariably ask yourself why you didn't garden more in the cooler months in the past.

Radishes, lettuce (all varieties), spinach and Brussels sprouts are just four of the many vegetable varieties to choose from. We have a nice PDF you can download from our website that lists vegetables that can be grown when the temperatures have dropped.

Composting is a technique used to speed the natural decomposition procedure. The technique changes organic waste matters to a mulch which is used to fertilize and condition soil. It gives the soil microorganisms that aid plant health, supplies nutrients to the soil, and helps clay soil drain better and sandy soil retain water. It's free and easy to make and is wonderful for the environment.

In the following video you will learn how to make compost, where to put your compost bin, what can and can't be composted, filling the bin, compost activators, getting the mixture right and hot and cool composting.

Growing your own organic herbs can have many benefits. If you grow herbs that are used for food seasoning, you’ll always have fresh herbs on hand during cooking. You can also grow herbs for aromatics and to keep the room the herbs are in both smelling fresh and looking beautiful. And herbs for teas will ensure that you have the freshest tea blends that you can even customize. Starting your own organic herb garden is also very easy.

The Container

Choose your container carefully, as you want to be sure that it will be big enough to sustain the herbs. Small pots like you would commonly find in department stores won’t necessarily do you very well. It will be beneficial to read the seed packet to be sure of the depth your plants are going to need.

It always amazes me that people buy large, heavy duty black plastic bags (that probably take 500 years to biodegrade), spend all fall raking up leaves to put in these bags, (good exercise) and then put those bagged leaves out by the curb for trash pickup. When all they have to do is leave them in a pile and they will bio-degrade and be gone by spring and then you have a nice compost pile. Or just leave them on the lawn. I rarely see any signs of them in the spring and our ground is the better for it.

Nature creates compost all the time without human intervention. But gardeners can step in and speed up the composting process by creating the optimal conditions for decomposition:

Organic gardening is a gardening mode without the use of rough chemical pesticides, genetically changed organisms for veggies and essentially a former more traditional gardening way.

Before the use of chemical pesticides, gardening was done "old school" by utilizing what nature gave use to produce our harvests and vegetables.

In the follow video, Tim MacWelch, owner and Head Instructor of Earth Connection School of Wilderness Survival and Ancient Skills, talks about what organic gardening is and gives us the organic gardening basics. He will also let us know about organic garden planning, what to plan and when.

If you are one of the many gardeners who are into organic planting then one of the most important thing you will be needing in order for your plant to grow is to make a compost fertilizer right at your backyard or should I rather say right from your kitchen. Yep, those leftover from your dinner plate can turn into gold fertilizer for your plants to grow healthy.

Here's what you need to make a good compost:

1. Organic materials - This can be the leftover you had on dinner, fruit and vegetable waste, leaves, woods etc.

It is absolutely necessary to know the chemical characteristics of your soil, in order to cultivate healthy plants. The soil must be tested to establish if the nutritive elements are inside the soil and if the PH value is good. If there aren’t good conditions, the tests will show you what you need to do to obtain the equilibrium of essential nutrients and the proper reaction. The importance of the 15 chemical substances present in the soil will surely influence the quantity and quality of the products obtained.

The organic substances are important for the soil as they will be a reservoir of humidity and nutrients that will become available for the plant. The value of the PH will affect all the mineral elements and biological processes. Testing the PH with instruments is essential to identify the need for adjustments. Phosphor will stimulate the growth of primary roots and will hurry the growing process. If you don’t have enough phosphor in your soil, the leaves will be deformed and some of them will even die.

You may not know it, but composting has a number of benefits. It may seem as though it is a difficult project to start, but it actually is not. In addition to being a more natural way to dispose of food scraps and other organic manner, your compost heap will actually benefit you in a few aspects of your life.

If the soil in your yard or garden is in an unhealthy state, compost will help you to enrich the soil. This may, actually, be the very reason you or your neighbors began a compost heap in the first place. Compost will produce and encourages the production of bacteria and fungi that create humus. Humus will boost the nutrients found in the soil and help the soil stay moist. And because of the nutrients, compost will keep the plants - or grass - healthier.

Organic gardening does not have to be a past time that’s just for adults. No matter their age, there’s never a bad time to get kids involved in the garden. It can be beneficial in a number of ways - from getting them outside and in the dirt to increasing their knowledge about the food they eat. And it’s very easy to get the kids involved in all aspects of organic gardening.

Talk to Them

Invite them out to the garden with you to lend a helping hand. While you are out there with them, talk to them about what you’re doing and what you’re asking them to do. The best method of getting kids involved is to make sure they understand why they’re doing something. And above all, encourage questions. Even if you don’t know the answer, you both can make a project out of looking up the answer.

Perhaps you’ve been considering starting an organic garden. It is certainly something that requires a bit of consideration. Gardening, in general, will require some time and effort, as well as a bit of planning ahead. There are, however, a great many benefits to starting your own organic garden.

The first benefit, of course, is that you can avoid many of the toxic pesticides commonly used on fruits and vegetables you’d find in the supermarket. You can also ensure that you’re not being exposed to genetically modified foods by purchasing heirloom seeds.

You've decided to do you gardening the healthy and safe way for you and your family, but your not sure how to start. To achieve the best results you want from your organic garden, you need to ask yourself a few questions.

Here are a few of the questions that come to mind:

Do you have an area that has full sun for most of the day?

What kind of soil do you have? Not to worry, as you can always add amendments with the regular addition of organic matter to make your soil suitable for organic garden growing.