Tag: Organic Horticulture

Partial Shade: Its Vital Role in Organic Vegetable Gardening

Why does partial shade play an important role in organic vegetable gardening? And how can such shade be done? And is it really vital for your produce to grow?

For gardeners, they know that shade plays an important role in what they are doing as much as the sun. This is especially true if one is into organic gardening of vegetables. The exposure to sun and its need to be in shade still depends upon what plant you want as produce. But learning all about the plant and its needs first will lead a gardener for a better output.

Being one with nature, being in touched with your produce, is the main responsibility of an organic farmer, in the first place. So before you might want to delve into this, you must first be ready to be patient and hardworking because of the holistic approach being used in such type of gardening, everything depends on the farmer, they have no one to turn to except for themselves and the natural environment.

Organic Horticulture
The word horticulture comes from two Latin words, hortus that means garden plant and cultura or culture. It is both an art and science of planting and producing vegetables, flowers, fruits and even ornamental plants.

Horticulture has five parts of study; floriculture for floral plants, landscape horticulture for landscape ornaments, pomology for fruits, postharvest physiology is about keeping the harvested produce fresh and how to prevent these from rotting quickly.

The fifth area of study for horticulture is olericulture, which you might be interested in if you are into vegetable gardening because this tackles the process from producing the crops to marketing such.

Partial Shade
You may know that a plant needs soil, sun and water to be able to survive. But you must also be aware that it needs shade, especially the vegetables because not only one must protect it as a plant but must also care for it to produce a good harvest.

In organic vegetable gardening, by exposing the plants to a range of 30 to 50 percent of shade can actually lower the leaves’ temperature by about 10 percent or even more. For the northern and coastal climates, 30 percent shade is recommendable while 47 to 50 percent in hot and summer-like places.

By doing what’s stated above, vegetables like lettuce, arugula, mustard greens and mesclun mix would produce better qualities.

The shade also lessens the temperature of the soil by three to six degrees Fahrenheit. This will benefit vegetables such as cabbages, mustard greens, broccoli, chard, radishes, turnips and spinach that grow in the soil. It is because these produce will germinate better when the soil temperature is below 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Shade Tent
You can also provide your plants with handmade tents. This will be most beneficial if you have a large produce and you can’t attend to each plant one-by-one, placing cloth as shade at top of each one.

To do a shade tent, you would need sturdy plastic tubing that are about 1/2 or 3/4-inch in diameter. Cut this tubing into 6-foot in length, just enough for it to arch a foot length above your crops. For each arch that you’ve made, place a bamboo or rebar stakes, each one at about 18 inches. Put these in the ground at the sides of the plants’ bed until about 10 inches of each of the stakes is visible. Now you can bow your tubing by sliding its ends at the stakes.

With the foundation ready, you can now place a shade cloth over the arches for it to cover the plants’ bed. Make sure to clip the cloth at the tubing so that it will remain in place.

Remember, if partial shade is not readily available when you are into organic vegetable gardening, make one by just doing the abovementioned procedure.

Organic Gardening Magazine, A Resource of Wealth

Green thumbs really do come into play when going about organic gardening. But it is not always about the greenness of one’s thumb but rather the knowledge of that person about the subject that will make them successful in the venture. And where is the right venue to look for such resources but through the organic gardening magazines.

Basic Facts about Organic Gardening
The simplest definition for organic gardening may be that it is the type of gardening wherein the farmer is at one with nature. In such type that may also be called organic horticulture, the gardener doesn’t use commercial fertilizers or even pesticides on their plants.

Organic is the Way to Go
Is it really possible to grow plants without the help of artificial fertilizers and the vast range of pesticides available in the market? Name the pests, may it be ants, rodents, insects, at this time and age, you’d find the suitable chemical to ward these pests off.

But this is not the case with organic gardening, because in this, the farmer uses whatever is available and is suitable for their type of plants, just within the environment. So in this case, the person who is into such type of gardening looks into nature, studies the plants and works on cultivating those without using anything synthetic.

Organic Gardening Magazine
The concept may appeal hard at first especially with people who are so well-versed with commercially available gardening resources. This is where organic gardening magazines will be of great help.

Wherever you are, it will not be hard to find a magazine which talks about such procedure. The Net also has various online magazines about organic gardening. All one needs to do is look for it.

What to Look For
If you are really interested in starting such or already are into one but want to broaden your knowledge about it, here are some more things you might want to consider browsing about.

Horticulture has five parts of study. You may want to look for articles on magazines and other resources based on what types of plants you want to grow or are already growing.

Floriculture is the organic way of growing floral plants. It also explains marketing of such and maintenance.

Landscape horticulture is all about producing and marketing landscape ornaments. This may be a good business venture if handled the right way.

Vegetable production, meanwhile, is part of Olericulture. This also involves maintenance and the right marketing techniques for producers of such.

Pomology is about fruits. This will explain growing such, producing and marketing the products.

Lastly, Postharvest Physiology tackles ways to produce quality products with this type of gardening while avoiding spoilage of the produce.

Going Holistic
Gardening is still a trial and error approach however you want to do it. But organic uses the holistic approach that has been tested through time and cultivated through the years. One’s basic knowledge of the environment and the plants they plan to harvest is all they need to go about this.

These are the basic facts you might want to look out for when searching at the organic gardening magazine or other resources for such topic. The most important thing here is to know your environment so that you won’t have any trouble when choosing the plants that you would want to place in it, thus, the more chances of having great output.