Choosing Flowers For the Organic Garden

Organic gardening has steadily gained popularity and it's not surprising since virtually every kind of plant and flower can be grown organically. However, it's important to choose the plants and flowers that are best suited to your own environment and area. Choosing plants that are suited to the environment in which they grow is one of the best ways to reduce the use of fungicides, pesticides and other chemicals in the garden.

For example, it would be difficult to use organic gardening methods to grow tropical varieties of plants and flowers in a cold climate, just as it would be difficult to grow cold climate plants in the tropics. That's why it's best to use the flowers and plants that are best suited for your own environment.

One great way to choose the right plants for an organic garden is to choose native plants. This helps you to know which plants to choose and which ones will do best without the need to use chemicals.

Be assured that using native species of plants doesn't mean a dull or boring garden. Native species of flowers and plants are available in just about every color, and in a variety of sizes, shapes and textures as well. A beautiful mixture of native plants can produce an organic garden you'll be proud to show the world.

While you're choosing the perfect varieties of flowers and plants for your garden make sure you choose only the healthiest specimens, because choosing unhealthy plants, or those that are infected with disease or infested by insects, could actually introduce these problems into your garden, thus making gardening organically more difficult.

Choosing the healthiest plants and flowers, on the other hand, will get your organic garden off to a great start, since healthy plants are better at fighting off pests, and resisting bacterial, viral and fungal infections. The healthy plants in your garden will be able to fight off these common ailments without any need for chemicals.

Once your plants have been chosen and brought home, transplant them as quickly as possible. It's a good idea to have a supply of finished compost available when starting an organic garden. Starting a compost bin is a great idea for any organic gardener, since high quality compost often contains nutrients that even the best commercial fertilizers do not. In addition, creating your own compost means less waste going to landfills, and this can produce a healthier environment as well as a healthy garden.

When working a compost mixture in the soil, it's not necessary to go deep. Most plants root only to a depth of about six inches, so working the compost mixture into the first six to eight inches of the soil in the organic flower bed should be sufficient.

When transplanting seedlings from plastic nursery containers, carefully remove the plant from the container, while tearing away those roots that have grown past the container. Before planting the transplants, be sure the soil has been adequately prepared with good organic material. Having organic material in the soil not only will provide a great source of nutrition for the young plants, but it will encourage the growth of beneficial organisms such as earthworms. Earthworms can work the soil better than any garden instrument, and they're an integral part of any successful organic garden.