Does Growing Vegetables Organically at Home Deplete the Soil?
I’m a bit reluctant to start a veg garden, I know vegetables require lots of nutrients, and I dont want to use fertilizers. Is there a sustainable way to grow vegetables at home without using any chemicals or buying extra soil? while at the same time mantaining a constant level of nutrients in the soil?
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Tagged with: chemicals • Extra • Fertilizers • Growing Vegetables • Nutrients • Soil • Vegetables
Filed under: Your Garden Q and A
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Yes – just regularly add organic matter like home made compost or farmyard or stable manure. I have a friend who grows lots of vegetables who has a grass cutting round in the summer. He brings all the grass clippings home and spreads them on the surface of the soil around and in between his vegetables. He’s been doing this for years and as a result has beautifully fertile friable soil and the beauty of using a thick organic mulch like this is that it both conserves moisture and suppresses weeds.
Just rotate the crops accordingly. One type of vegetable will deplete a certain item while another will release. Read up on rotation to get an idea, cause I have no idea what you plan on growing. I have had my garden going strong for over 10 years and never once used fertilizer.
Once you build soil fertility by adding compost, composted manure, or organic soil amendments to the soil, you can maintain it by composting and rotating legumes and green manure crops through your garden. Composting recycles nutrients from your kitchen waste stream and all the inedible parts of plants back through your garden. Planting legumes as part of your vegetable crop rotation adds free fertilizer to your garden, thanks to the symbiotic rhizobia colonies on the roots of legumes.
With proper organic vegetable gardening methods, you can actually increase yields while increasing soil organic matter and fertility. For more information, see
http://www.grow-it-organically.com
Yes but use a compost of leaves grass and plant scraps from the table. in the soil.
Aquaponics! It’s the only way to go now. It’s a marriage of Aquaculture (fish farming) and Hydroponics (soiless gardening). Both systems work WITH each other. The fish "waste" is fed to your plants (and they LOVE IT!) and the plants -in turn- "clean" the water for the fish. Endless supply of nutrients for plants, my veggies taste amazing, gardening system uses LESS water than all other gardening techniques, easy to maintain (just have to keep the fish fed) AND I get to eat the fish too (I use Talapia and Trout – very tasty). I’m surprised more people aren’t doing this. It’s SO EASY and uses less resources (water/soil/nutrients). Totally organic – and less impact on environment. I even made my system portable – so it’s easy to move if I have to.
You can find more info here ==>> http://www.Aquaponics4YouReview.com
Seriously, you should check it out!
Hope this helps – Happy Gardening