The Magic of a Kitchen Garden Organic Gardening for Beginners

Growing your own herbs and vegetables in your kitchen garden is a very
enriching experience
All right, let me admit it. Just like any other normal red-blooded and healthy
child, I loved getting grimy and dirty, rooting about in the garden when young.
And I was fortunate to have elders around me, who positively enjoyed
encouraging us kids to go out and play in the dirt and sun, instead of wrapping
us up in cotton wool and clucking in concern when we got dirty and scrubby.
Luckily, my father always used to be transferred to out of the way mountain
fastnesses and other forest laden places, where there was plenty of space to
make really huge gardens – flowers and vegetables, with plenty of sun, water,
and rich organic soil. That was the time when people did not bother about
spraying every single plant surface with poisonous pesticides.
So naturally, the habit of digging my fingers deep into rich soil continued
when I grew up. But that was when I found out, that the world consisted of
places, where you could not manage to have huge gardens outdoors.

 

Growing a Vegetable Garden

You can grow almost anything in your garden and anywhere! Herbs,
vegetables…

Now that you have decided to keep your dining table replenished with fresh
produce straight from your garden, and your kitchen stocked economically,
here is how you grow a vegetable garden in a small plot of land and also in
pots.

First, choose an area which gets sunshine for at least 4 to 5 hours every day.
This area should not be under the shade of a tree or shaded because of leafy
overgrowths.
Now you have to see whether you want to grow all the vegetables in one large
container, or do you have garden beds?
The garden beds should be prepared by digging to a depth of about 30 cm.

Pot Containers

If you are using pot size containers, make sure that the pots are at least 30 cm
deep. A drainage hole at the bottom of the pot is necessary so that the excess
water can flow out easily.

Before filling the pot, cover the hole with a piece of broken brick or pot shard.
Then fill the pot with manure and soil.

Do not sow the seeds too deep in the pot. You can plant one cauliflower in a
medium-sized pot. For other plants and vegetables, you can grow up to three
plants in a 30 cm pot, and five plants in a 45 cm pot.

Mint and coriander can be grown even in 15 cm pots. While you are watering
the pots keep on pouring water, until the water starts to drain out.
You can grow radishes, coriander, mint, spinach, tomatoes, and aubergines
throughout the year.

During the summer, you need to look for summer plants indigenous to your
country and to your area. Nevertheless, the popular universal summer plants are cucumber, gourds, watermelons, and other green plants with a huge
percentage of liquid content.

Growing Wheat on Your Rooftop!

Now, like I said in the introduction, this was an experiment done by an
acquaintance, and he managed to grow wheat on his rooftop. When I asked
him if the roof did not start leaking, because of water seepage when he
watered the seedlings, he just smiled and said the bottom base was of a
waterproof material – a solid plastic covering, covering his roof. After that, he
said that the plants needed just 4 – 6 inches of soil for the roots to grow.

So start by wetting the wheat which you need to sow, in water, place it in a
cool and dark place for 18 hours. This is going to start germinating.

Now waterproof your roof with a plastic cover and make the wheat bed. He
put paving stones, 6 inches in height by the sides of the beds, so that he had
huge squares in which he was going to plant this wheat germinating in his
garage. He filled these beds with soil, with organic fertilizer. After that, he just
sprinkled the germinating seeds on the moist soil, covered them with a layer of
soil, sprinkle them with water and allowed them to grow.

Sunflowers in Your Kitchen Garden

Sunflowers are natives of Brazil, and being hardy herbs they can be grown all
over temperate, subtropical and tropical regions all over the globe. Sunflowers
are excellent for extraction of oil.

The sunflower is basically of a warm temperate and tropical climate, and
flourishes in a sunbaked atmosphere. It does fairly well in loamy and Sandy
soil. If the atmospheric temperature is between 10 to 45°C, and the rainfall is
between 150- 200 cm per annum, you can plant sunflowers. These plants can
be planted evenly throughout the year.

Even though the sunflower likes well-drained soil, they grow even better in
well watered beds.

You can also plant the sunflower in fields like an agricultural crop. It also
adapts to partly indoor and partly outdoor rearing. It can thus be raised on
rooftops or even in corridors which are sunny and shady, in containers of the
dimensions of 45 x 45 x 45 cm. Fill up these containers with Sandy loam soil
and 10 – 15% of farmyard fertilizer.

So now that you know more about how to grow a kitchen garden with
different vegetables and fruit, and also how to make your own compost, is not
it time you grow organic?
Of course, the sunflowers that you plan in your kitchen garden, or just going
to be beautiful enough to make your kitchen garden all bright and sunny, but
you may want to plant them in fields for a sunflower crop. Apart from edible
oil, sunflowers are also used in ancient medicine. Wild sunflower root is used
in Chinese and ancient Indian medicine to take care of whooping cough,
asthma and bronchitis, colds and lung infections. The oil extracted from
sunflowers is used with other flower extracts like to rose, cinnamon, lavender
and musk in beauty preparations and lotions.
Geranium oil is, of course, used as a base to fill up the rest of the bottle of
your expensive rose oil. So you are paying for 90% geranium oil and 10% rose
oil.

Remember that gardening is a very fulfilling and enriching experience. You
may just have two go outside, and work hard in the garden in the open air and
in the sun. If you are not used to doing that, you may find it a very painful
exercise in the initial stages with aching arms and back. However, with a
sturdy pair of gardening boots and gardening gloves, this can be any enjoyable
part of your daily routine, bringing about a change in lifestyle.

How fulfilling this activity is!

 

click here to download the full copy of this book.