The Beginner’s Guide to Organic Growing

Written for beginners, here are some of my top tips for starting out.

You don’t need to be an expert farmer, or even a green fingered gardener to grow some delicious organic produce at home. A few herbs in a pot, or a couple of tomato plants on the balcony can enhance your lifestyle and change the way you think about food. The joy of eating something you have grown yourself is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and fortunately with some guidance, is something we can all achieve.

If you are starting out, raised beds and pots are the best place to start - they allow you to create a good soil media in the first season, avoiding the laborious task of improving what you have. Having good soil from the off will help you grow strong healthy plants, which will aid them in fending off pest and disease. This is fundamental in all organic growing. Healthy soil, happy plants.

If you decide on raised beds, I would suggest building them to about seat height, 50cm or so - this will add an element of comfort to the jobs of planting, weeding and harvesting. Make the centre of your bed arm’s length from the edge, meaning you can reach into the middle without walking on the soil, reducing compaction. Wood is usually the cheapest and easiest material to build your raised beds from, but reclaimed bricks, blocks or corrugated tin can work as well. Avoid old railway sleepers, as they can leech toxic creosote into your soil.  I would suggest a blend of roughly 60% top soil and 40% compost, giving your plants a nice varied diet of mineral and organic matter. Be sure not to fill the bed up to the top as, in an ideal world, you will be adding more compost in following years. Adding compost is the most important job in the garden. When growing organically, we can’t rely on artificial fertiliser, so a good helping of compost each season is a must. Build the raised bed directly onto bare ground, allowing worms to colonise and water to drain away, much like a well-placed compost bin. No need to line it. If you are growing in pots, make sure there are sufficient drainage holes and be aware that you will need to replenish the soil every two years or so, as nutrient depletion is inevitable.

Growing in window boxes or hanging baskets requires a little more care - you will need to be quite diligent with watering, as you have raised the soil surface away from natural ground level moisture. The edges of raised beds and the base of pots can be the perfect habitat for slugs and snails, so check regularly and remove. No need for slug pellets here!

Buying good quality seeds and plants is a good place to start when growing your own. Like anything, spending a little more with a good organic seed supplier will give you a better start. The seed will be fresher and more viable. Look out for an organic certification symbol, or speak to your supplier about where your seeds come from. I favour UK grown, organic, open-pollinated seed.

If you have limited space, grow produce that is expensive to buy and easy to grow. Salads, soft herbs and strawberries are a good place to start, as they have shallow, fibrous roots which respond well to container growing. Conveniently, they are an easy thing to start off with. Salads and soft herbs grow easily from seed and woody herbs and strawberries can be purchased in most garden centres. Tomatoes and chillies are firm favourites for the urban kitchen gardener, but will need a sheltered, sunny position in order to thrive. If you have areas of partial shade, oriental greens, chard, kale, spring onions, spinach and most herbs do quite well with only 4-5 hours of sun per day.

Create interest in your space by adding ornamental flowers, plants to attract bees and fruit. This will create a diverse environment in which your produce will thrive. Diversity is the key to a healthy organic environment, so be experimental with variety. I would advise being tentative with weeding until you know what’s coming up. Some poppy seeds could have blown in on the wind, or some borage could have jumped the neighbours fence. Sometimes, leaving things be can offer surprising success. It doesn’t have to look perfect, especially when you’re starting out. Imperfections add character and encourage beneficial insects, so go easy and enjoy the process.

This post was written as a blog for Organic UK.