Every spring, whether northern or southern hemisphere, many people begin to think about gardening. Some have been gardening every year since they were old enough to help in the family garden back of the house. Others have begun gardening only recently. Most have questions, though.How to make an organic garden is a question that arises more frequently these days, as people become more concerned about health issues. They want to know that the produce they are eating is good for their health and safe for their families to eat. They want to begin an organic garden.Many books have been written about how to make an organic garden, and we cannot compete with them in one article, but we offer here 7 basic steps for beginners.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #1Begin your organic garden by learning your plant hardiness zone. You will need to know your climate, and what organic produce will grow best there. If you live in the United States, you can access the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map on many gardening sites or seed websites. Planting directions on seed packets are based on the average last frost date. The last frost date for your area will be the last spring day when you might have a killing frost.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #2After you have determined your local climate, it is time to choose a location on your property for your organic garden. The area most convenient to your back door may not be the best for an organic garden. Look for a location that never has standing water. Your plants need good soil drainage. Check to see if the plants will be protected from the wind. Will your organic garden be close to water so you can easily care for it?How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #3Next, you will need to test the soil for your organic garden. In the U.S., check online for your county or state Home/Agricultural Extension Service. They will guide you in taking soil samples from different areas of the location you chose for your organic garden. Be sure you label each sample of soil as to part of the garden, and send it to be analyzed. This analysis will help you know what to add to the soil for a great harvest. Remember, one of the basic things you will do in your organic garden is to feed the soil so the soil can feed the plants.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #4Order seeds, using information about your climate and soil. Be sure you order certified organic seed so that you can have an authentic organic garden. A good online seed supply source is Main Street Seed and Supply. You can buy as little as a teaspoon of seed for a small organic garden, or pounds of organic seed for farming. While ordering seeds, be sure to include onions, garlic, and marigold flowers. These plants can be a first line of defense in an organic garden’s pest control program.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #5While you wait for your seeds to arrive, you need to prepare the organic garden bed. If there is grass growing in the location, removed it first. Use a sharp, flat-edged spade to slice out the sod. Shake off as much soil as you can, and remove the grass from the area. Till the soil to a depth of about 12″, and work in organic fertilizer, checking your soil analysis to know what amendments are needed.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #6If you have organic seedlings to plant, water them well the day before you intend to plant them in the organic garden. The best time to set them in the garden is a still, overcast day. If you must plant on a sunny day, take care not to stress the plants more than necessary. Use the seedlings’ pots to determine how deeply to plant them.If you are planting seeds in your organic garden, follow instructions that come with each type of seed.How to Make an Organic Garden – Step #7Apply organic mulch soon after planting. Mulch conserves water, cools soil, and keeps weeds at bay. If you use compost, chipped bark, shredded bark, shredded, shredded leaves, or straw, your mulch will also improve soil quality in your organic garden. Apply 2 to 4 inches of mulch, being careful not to get it too close to the plant stems. Mulch can rot the stems. It can also become a hideout for nibbling little garden mice.Organic Garden Tip:Label your plant rows and keep a record of your garden’s progress. Save seed information for everything in your organic garden. A garden journal, with photos throughout the gardening season, will help you know what you want to repeat or change in next year’s organic garden.

Organic gardening has increasingly become an important part of the curriculum in schools around the world. Teachers at every grade level find themselves teaching it to students, and sometimes being called on to give a speech to a group of parents. As a career educator and principal, I know the difficulty of opening up time for speech preparation, and offer this organic gardening speech for your use. Feel free to edit it to fit your needs.Organic Gardening SpeechHow selfish are you? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, how selfish would you rate yourself? If you are the least bit selfish, you might be interested in organic gardening.An organic gardening speech might seem more appropriate coming from a Home Economics teacher, but I am just selfish enough that I love organic gardening. I want to share that love with you and with your children.ImagineI want you to come with me, in imagination, to a time and place before the Industrial Revolution. The year is 1707. It is late summer. We find ourselves walking the streets of a small town. Houses are spaced well apart for privacy. Land stretches out behind each house. As we look, we notice that much of that land is taken up by gardens. Here and there, we see both adults and children actively engaged in gardening. The plants are beautiful.You call to one of the adults and ask what they use to make the garden so lush. A broad smile breaks, and through the smile come the words, “Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants.”You shake your head. Poor people. Too bad they don’t know about that miracle combination of chemicals you saw advertised on TV last week. That’s the easy way to grow spectacular plants!DinnerThe organic gardener invites us to join them for the evening meal, and we accept. At dinner, we join in the prayer of thanks, and then watch in amazement as the children, one after another, begin eating fresh vegetables.You yourself are not that fond of vegetables, but you politely take a small serving of each. You bite into a leaf of steamed cabbage, and your eyes open wide in amazement. It is sweet – twice as sweet as the cabbage you buy at your local market! You watch a small child fill his mouth with dark green kale, and shudder. There’s a small spoonful of the nasty vegetable on your own plate, and you pick at it, putting a single small leaf in your mouth. Amazing! It, too, is twice as sweet as any kale you ever ate. The same seems true of every vegetable on the table. You decide that if your supermarket vegetables were this good, you would eat a lot more of them.Our imaginary trip ends at that dinner table, and we return to the present.Organic Gardening’s BenefitsOrganic gardening has many benefits. If you are completely selfish, you will want those benefits for yourself. If you are unselfish, you will want those benefits for your family. Let me give you just three of organic gardening’s benefits.1. Taste: Organic gardening has been proven to produce tastier fruits and vegetables. A Hong Kong study measured Brix levels, the percentage of sugar in plant juices, using produce from organic gardening and from non-organic gardening. The results showed that organic gardening produced produce that was 2 to 4 times as sweet as that produced by non-organic gardening. Sweeter fruits and vegetables are tastier, and easier to eat, whether you are a young person or an adult. Organic gardening helps us eat better by providing tastier fruits and vegetables.2. Nutrition: Organic gardening has also been found to provide nutritionally superior produce. Virginia Worthington, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, compared the composition of vegetables grown simultaneously under different farming conditions. Her work included 41 studies with 1,240 comparisons of 35 vitamins and minerals. Worthington found that organic gardening produced vegetables and fruits that were higher in most minerals and vitamins than those from non-organic gardening. Not only that, organic gardening produce was lower in potentially harmful nitrates, which result from nitrogen fertilizers. Dr. Worthington concluded that produce from organic gardening is nutritionally superior. You and your family will enjoy better health with fruits and vegetables from organic gardening. (Effect of Agricultural Methods on Nutritional Quality: A Comparison of Organic with Conventional Crops, Virginia Worthington MS, ScD, CNS, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1998, Alternative Therapies, Volume 4, 1998, pages 58-69)3. Exercise: Finally, organic gardening offers you and your children regular daily exercise in the outdoors. Organic gardening helps you build muscles, especially important core muscles. Organic gardening gets you into the sunlight where you can absorb essential vitamin D. Organic gardening is a great stress management tool. Organic gardening gives you an outlet for creativity. It provides satisfaction as you see your work produce useful fruits, herbs, and vegetables.We could talk about the aesthetic pleasures of organic gardening – how beautiful that garden might become. We could talk about how you can save money with organic gardening – growing your produce instead of purchasing.Finally, we could talk about how important it is for our children to learn about organic gardening, to embrace it as the way to better health, and to practice it with school, home, and community gardens.An organic gardening speech could go on for hours, but I’m going to stop here, hoping that I have whetted your appetite enough that you will seek out more information on organic gardening.Helpful Tip for Speech-giversA few large bowls of beautiful organic produce can be set on the platform or around the room to help visual learners picture organic gardening.