Organic Gardening: Anyone Can Garden

If you read the Greenbacks Gal, you know this is my first year of gardening. I’m truly inspired by Rene of Budget Saving Mom and her organic garden. I know a lot of you garden as well and have been a big encouragement to me! I’m excited Rene agreed to guest post and share her enthusiasm for organic gardening!

Organic Gardening

I am so excited that Andrea, has asked me to come and talk to you guys about organic gardening! Organic gardening is a great way to save money while still being able to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables. Our family loves to garden organically. We try to grow the majority of the food that we need throughout the year. We have a spring, summer and fall organic garden. Plus, we try to keep a few plants going during winter since we live in the south.

Organic Gardening Saves Money

I strongly encourage everyone to start a garden. While your organic garden does not have to be huge, it is amazing how much you can grow even in a small area.

Many vegetables, herbs and fruits are easy to grow, and the money that you can save is amazing. Even with an organic garden that is only a few feet, if you garden intensively, you can grow fresh food for most days of the week in season.

If you eat many salads, imagine not have to buy lettuce for the majority of the year! Right there you will see savings. In addition to saving money, there is the knowledge that you know exactly what has been placed on your food. You know that there are no chemicals that have been on your plants. You are able to pick your food when it is completely ripe, and therefore more nutritious than anything that you could buy at the store.

Organic Gardening: Fall Gardens:

In many areas you still have time to plant a fall organic garden which can be full of delicious vegetables.

Vegetables To Plant In A Fall Garden:

• broccoli
• cabbage
• carrots
• cauliflower
• cucumber
• garlic
• kale
• lettuce
• onions
• parsley
• peas
• radishes
• rhubarb
• swiss chard
• turnips

You can find instructions about how to grow many fruits, vegetables and herbs here.

Garden Organically With Little Time Or Space:

If you do not have a lot of time, consider container gardening or raised bed gardening. These gardens are small and elevated from the ground.

Since they are elevated from the ground, they are much less likely to contain weeds.

When I was far along in my pregnancy one year, I only had 4 raised bed gardens that were 4×4 and about 10 container gardens. I still had an abundance of produce for my family. I only spent 10-15 minutes a day gardening, but still had enough excess to preserve some of our food.

Raised bed gardens allow you to garden quite intensively so that you can raise much food in a small amount of space. I have a video tutorial about how to build raised gardens.

Organically Garden With Tough Home Owner’s Associations:

Many people live in subdivisions that do not allow organic gardens. However, there are still ways that you can grow fruits and vegetables. You can have a landscape garden. Landscape gardening is so much fun! I use landscape gardening just because we have many trees, and I like to plant fruits and vegetables wherever I can find some sun!

When you landscape garden, you replace non food bearing plants, with food bearing plants. Switch out your bushes,with fruit bushes, plant edible ground cover such strawberries, and plant fruit trees.

Use herbs as a flower garden. Herbs have beautiful flowers! One of my favorite flowers is the beautiful, purple sage flower. So, I plant herbs that flower in my flower garden along the sidewalk on the way to my house.

Traditional Organic Gardening:

Of course the last way to garden is a traditional organic garden. You can just plant your seeds or seedlings directly in the ground. You will have to fight the weeds, and make sure that the ground is tilled, but it is very doable. Our one acre garden and 100 foot started out as a traditional garden. We have been slowly adding dirt each year to build the rows into a raised bed garden.

I really hope that each of you are inspired to start an organic garden! Growing your own fruits and vegetables is delicious & healthy, plus helps you to save money.

Rene gives you tips on how you can save money with budget recipes,  canning recipes, homeschooling, and organic gardening. She has been blogging at Budget Saving Mom for almost 3 years. You will find coupons, store deals and coupon match-ups, printable coupons, freebies and more on Budget Saving Mom. You can sign up for her FREE daily newsletter here. She would love it if you would join her on Facebook and Twitter.