A beginners guide to organic gardening

20 Mar 2015

Looking at safer ways of taking care of your plants? We chatted with Josh Byrne from Gardening Australia about how to put the chemicals aside and start developing a healthy ecology in your garden.

Get the basics right first

“Make sure your plants get adequate light, particularly in smaller gardens. When they don’t get enough light, they’re weak and vulnerable to pests and diseases.”

“Provide your plants with healthy soil with adequate nutrition. The heart of that is compost, whether it’s homemade or purchased compost. Soil is more than something that just holds the plant up, it provides the fertility. A healthy plant with adequate nutrition in good soil will be much less likely to have pest issues.”

“Give them adequate water, too, but don’t overwater them, either. You don’t want plants where the soil is boggy, but you also don’t want plants that are moisture-stressed. That means your plants will be in better condition and naturally more resilient.”

Create the right garden ecology

“True organic gardening is more than just putting chemicals aside and using safe alternatives, it’s about changing the way you think about gardening.”

“Incorporate companion plants that attract beneficial insects, like planting a small flowering plant, such as members of the daisy or umbel families, which provide small flowers that attract beneficial insects like hoverflies, lacewings or ladybirds that feed on the flowers. You could perhaps grow nectar-producing flowers like banksias, which attract birds like honeyeaters.”

“Think about small water features to attract frogs – they help with pest control, like slugs snails and slaters. It’s about creating an ecology, so you have other participants in the garden that reduce the likelihood of pests.”

Practice good garden hygiene

“When you notice a pest outbreak, clean it up and get rid of it. Don’t allow numbers to build. You may want to look at crop rotation, like growing certain crops in different pots or garden beds each season to reduce the numbers of pest build up.”

Consider using non-chemical solutions

“Instead of using chemical sprays to protect crops, look at netting to stop caterpillars and white cabbage moths from attacking. Finally, consider what I would call safe natural and certified organic pest and disease control options, of which there are a number of remedies. However, this is a last resort, because even the use of these natural sprays can actually disrupt beneficial insect populations and disrupt the ecology that we want to create.”