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.