My First Year Into Organic Gardening

J.A.B. — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 03:49:57 +0000

Last summer, when we met for bible study at a friend’s house, he would always put bowlfuls of cherry tomatoes on the table. He even offered everyone to take some home. That continued for several weeks. Those are from the few cherry tomato plants in his backyard. Those little plants grow a LOT tomatoes. So I decided to try my hands on some organic gardening this year.

It turned out that organic gardening is not as easy as it sounds. After many long hours of work and many a mosquito bites, I actually harvested my first cucumber in about one month’s time and my first cherry tomato two weeks later. There are definitely lessons that I learned. Not really the hard way, but there is indeed a learning curve.

Lessons I learned so far:

Do not buy seedlings. Buy seeds and plant your own. Organic seedling do not come in cheap. My neighbor bought his at 3 bucks a dozen, but I guess those are not really organic. My cherry tomato plants cost me 2 dollars each, same with cucumber. At the appropriate temperature, they will grow to the same size of those you pay a fortune very quickly.

About two weeks after I planted my purchased seedlings, I realized that my small garden actually could support more plants. So I planted some organic cucumber seeds my wife bought at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Soon enough, they germinated and grew into the size of the seedlings I bought in about three weeks. I paid ten dollars for 5 cucumber plants (and that was at a discount(, but those seeds cost me about 3 bucks, and I have a dozen more cucumber plants.

Every plant is different. Their need for soil depth, water consumption, sunshine, vary a lot from one plant to another. Treat them accordingly.

It turned out that the chili peppers are not very comfortable with cold temperature. I planted them on the 24 of May, when the mercury could drop below 10 degrees Celsius at night. They remained the same size for about four weeks. That’s right, four to five weeks before they started to grow VERY slowly. My neighbor’s three-bucks-a-dozen peppers already have green peppers three inches long dangling from plants three times as big as mine. And he planted those at least three weeks later.

What comforts me is that my cucumbers are doing pretty well.

Be prepared to spend quite some time in your garden. Weeds grow, and they grow fast. You need to get rid of them. When the plants

When the plants grow, you need to stake your plants, especially cucumber. They can grow very tall, or long, if you do not stake them and tie them up. When dozens of cherry tomatoes grow on those tiny stems, they need some support. I planted the cherry tomatoes about two feet apart, but they seemed to be too close and that made it very hard for me to put some support under those branching stems.

As it’s still early into my first year in organic gardening, there is a lot more to learn. And rest assured, I am learning and I will be sharing.

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My First Year Into Organic Gardening