The festive season is a time for reflection and new beginnings, often bringing thoughts of health and happiness, family and friends, and of course, detoxifying from too much Christmas merriment. It is a time when one sets themselves new goals and challenges for the year ahead. If, like many, you aim to get fit, stress less, eat healthy and save money, one way to achieve these goals is to become an organic vegetable grower. Working in the garden is both a healthy and rewarding activity, providing many benefits including exercise, relaxation, a sense of accomplishment and well-being and to top it all off, you have a source of fresh, healthy and tasty food. Eating lots of fresh, organic vegetables is the best way to detoxify your body. Fresh organic salad vegetables are bursting with antioxidants and combining them in summer salads is the quickest way to improve your health and increase your vitality. Antioxidants can prevent many common ailments as well as lessen joint and muscle pain, reduce inflammation and help slow the aging process. It is so easy to grow tasty, healthy, organic food in your very own backyard. You don’t need a huge space, as organic food can be grown in pots and containers, window boxes, old wheelbarrows, large tubs or in a sunny patch in the garden.

For vigorous, healthy and tasty vegetables, it is essential to begin your organic garden with a healthy soil. Plants grown in healthy soils are full of vitality and health and are less troubled by pests and disease when compared to plants grown in poor soils. Soil enriched with organic matter, such as composted manures and organic fertilisers, creates a healthy organic system in the soil. Good quality organic compost and organic plant foods can be very effective in preventing and minimising plant disease. Research indicates that by adding composted manure, the incidence of disease in plants is reduced by up to 70%.

Healthy organic gardens will always have some insect and pest activity. But not all insects are pests of vegetable crops. Some are completely harmless to plants while some species work as your assistant gardener. Like you, beneficial insects love nothing better than to potter around your garden. Remember, pest activity in the vegetable garden will attract beneficial predator insects to your garden to effectively control pest populations with minimal effort on your part. Producing pesticide-free food from your vegetable garden is one of the greatest advantages of organic gardening. Eradicating all insects from your garden may also eradicate beneficial insects and increase the reliance on pesticides. If you do need to spray, there are organic and organically based products that can be used in your garden that have minimal impact on the ecology of your garden.

Great easy vegetables to grow for the home garden include: lettuce, basil, strawberries, dwarf beans, cucumbers, capsicum, rocket, snow peas, tomatoes and parsley (just to name a few). Remember: plant selection is important as plants grown in the right conditions will have natural vigour and resistance to disease. A regular application of fertiliser produces strong, healthy organic vegetables which enables the plant to resist attack and outgrow damage. To maintain your organic garden, Searles Fish and Kelp fertilisers or Searles 5 in 1 are essential for your organic garden. Mushroom compost and both sugar cane and lucerne mulch dug into the soil also provide much needed nutrients and organic matter. If you are growing organic vegetables in pots, it is recommended that you use Searles Herb and Vegetable mix. Boyds Bay Garden World has everything to get you started as well as to maintain your organic vegetable garden. Our friendly, professional staff will assist you with all your organic vegetable garden needs.