my journey to growing organically

You might be surprised to learn that my garden isn’t organic.  I use sprays sparingly, but I do condition the ground prior to planting, and a lot of the products that I use aren’t organic.  The garage contains an assortment of bottles and packets of non-organic fertilisers and other products.  Last year, I made it a goal to start phasing non-organic products out and move towards an organic garden, but it is only now that I have actually had the impetus for change.  What caused this sudden turnaround, you might wonder?  Normally, I purchase all our fertilisers for the year during Kings Plant Barn’s annual Boxing Day Sale and receive a 25 percent discount.  This year, I was unable to do any Boxing Day sale shopping as I had recently helped mum to purchase a new washing machine and didn’t have any money to go sales shopping like I normally do.  Instead of feeling depressed about this, I have decided to turn it into an opportunity and look at things positively.  I probably shouldn’t be using a lot of the products I have been in the garden and ought to be able to justify why I’m using them, rather than just out of habit.  At least I could rationalise spraying our garlic, which has gotten bad rust over the past three years.  The problem is that I had gotten so used to some products, become dependent on them and became convinced that the only reason things were growing in the garden was due to them.  I’m now not convinced that this is true.  This year I’m going to try using products more connected with mother nature, such as compost and sheep pellets, which I already use, without adding more non-organic matter on top of this.

What steps am I taking towards moving to an organic garden?  I don’t want to spend a fortune on new organic products, and I already have some in the garage which can be used around the garden.  Here are some ideas I have come up with so far:
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• Refusing to purchase any new gardening sprays or plant food, unless they are organic.  I’m pleased that I have already started on this first step by not frequenting the Boxing Day Sales at the garden centres I shop at!
• Look at trying to sell existing products which aren’t organic.  I can use the money towards new organic products
• Using Seasol and other seaweed liquid fertilisers as a plant tonic.  Seaweed is organic by nature.  I have many bottles of seasol in the garage from a sale Bunnings had two years ago
• Try using just compost and sheep pellets to enrich the soil, both of which are organic
• Try to find organic seed raising mix to raise my new seedlings in (it would be even better to make up my own mixture from scratch, but baby steps!)
• Use banana peels around my roses instead of rose fertiliser.  Banana peels are high in potassium, which is needed for roses to flower well.  This can replace the bagged granular fertiliser which I normally use
• Try to find free coffee grinds from a café, which are good for the soil and are organic.  This can replace lots of the bagged fertiliser and nitrophoska which I normally use
• Look into making my own organic sprays to combat problems which have cropped up around the garden.  For example, a baking soda spray on cucurbits to prevent mildew.  I saw a good one in an instagram post by the Urban Veggie Patch, who I follow on Instagram
• Setting up a composting system.  I have talked about and researched this many times but never got around to actually doing anything about it.  This would be a good way to use kitchen scraps and recycle waste back into the garden

Have you got any tips for gardening organically?  I would love to receive them.  You can either leave a message at the end of this post or email me directly at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com