Today’s post is a guest post by my dear husband Jeff. He’s been gardening for a long time (I wrote a little about his gardening beginnings in this post) and I asked if he would like to share some of what he has learned through his experiences, here with us. He loves gardening and we like to joke that someday “when we retire” we will spend all of our time in the garden. His favorite reading material is looking through gardening catalogs, dreaming of all the things he wants to plant. He seems most satisfied after a day working outside, coming inside exhausted and completely covered in dirt.

1. Grow Organic: If you are not going to grow organic….. don’t grow at all, what’s the point, you can get poisonous food at the Supermarket.
2. Know your soil type: All soil is not created equal. Where we live we don’t really have soil…just clay, so we built our soil over the years by adding literally tons of compost and minerals. So consider the type of soil you have and get it tested for nutrients, or get yourself a soil test kit. After that you can observe your plants and they will show you what’s going on…. you can observe deficiencies and excesses in the plants health. If something doesn’t look right, Google it and find out what is happening.
3. Don’t get too mental about it: I’ve known lots of folks who couldn’t grow a plant to save their soul, and the one thing they all had in common was….they over thought it. Over fertilized, over watered, over every freakin thing. It’s not Rocket Science, put a seed in the ground and it will generally grow if you don’t interfere too much.
4. Use Azomite: This is a clay you can buy in 50 pound bags that is just packed full of nutrients and micro-nutrients. Plants….and animals that are fed Azomite Grow like crazy. Farmers put it in their animal feed….we put it in our daily drinking water…. Great stuff.
5. Use Organic Fertilizer: Even with compost, plants in most parts of the country still thrive better with extra fertilization. Organic Ferts can get spendy. You can mix your own if you have the time and inclination, and there are good books on the subject. A nice older Organic Gardening book by Rodale is always helpful to have. But here’s a little secret: You can get organic fertilizer for the lawn in 40 -50 pound bags at most big stores. We have it here at our Fred Meyer store. When you buy it for the lawn in 50- pound sacks it costs just a little more than the little boxes you pay way too much for. I put this lawn fert, Azomite and when I can a little Kelp meal in every planting hole. The organic ferts are slow release……. the plants in our garden always blow people away because they are so big and healthy. AND, a healthy plant is less likely to have bug, or disease problems. The lawn ferts are generally higher in Nitrogen, which are great for the growing stage of the plants…..later on you might want to get a fruiting/flowering mix. I usually just add some rock phosphate into my composts so have that stage covered pretty well. 
6. Use Diatomaceous Earth Liberally: This is a powder of microscopic animal skeletons, I believe from ancient sea beds. Spread it on the ground when it is dry and it will eliminate most garden bug problems. It’s is not a poison, mostly calcium and good for the soil, but these tiny skeletons are like microscopic razor blades and get into the bugs and ……well I won’t go into the gory details. But it kills em, and doesn’t hurt the good guys like the earthworms.
7. Look into other natural pest control for whatever pests are specific to your area. Beneficial nematodes are great for anyone. The are little micro worms that kill the soil living pests, but don’t harm the worms or good guys. You put em in a sprayer and spray em on your soil in the evenings when the sun won’t cook em, and they can get down into the soil. They’ll kill the grubs and the cutworms, and bad nematodes that we have here in abundance that will ruin any root crop. AND what I like to do is find a few grubs and inoculate them with some of these nematodes….. set em in a cool moist place and let the nematodes go to work planting a whole new crop of baby nematodes in the grubs….. so I can use these the next time I spray, and don’t have to go buy more. There are plenty of natural pest solutions. I’ve used Good mites to kill bad mite and aphids, and of course lady bugs. But the key is healthy plants. We rarely need to use anything.
8. Dig your beds deeply and mix the ferts and minerals needed to a good depth. We use raised beds almost exclusively.
9. If you have chickens, let em in the garden every Winter so they can scratch out all the little buggers, and do some fertilizing. And if you don’t have chickens, but could, Get em. Their poop is gold for compost, they eat the pests and they lay pure protein in handy little self contained packages called eggs. 
10. Compost: Make compost. When I first moved to this property there was no soil, just clay. I got truckloads of chicken poop, truckloads of Hay and Alfalfa, and bags of minerals and built huge Compost heaps. The bigger the better. (Unfortunately after building my first Huge 10 foot high heap of chicken poop, alfalfa and hay etc. on the hottest day of the year I went into the house for a nice cool drink of well water. That was the day I found out where the well actually was. It was directly under my compost heap. The water was a dark brown Poop tea. DRAT!!! Why would anybody have a well unmarked and all below ground level. So I had to move that huge heap across the property where it wouldn’t drain directly into our drinking water. (Our well is 150 feet deep, so unless you put something like a mountain of poop right on top of it, it gives us some really wonderfully pure earth filtered water.)
    Rodale also had a big thick excellent book on composting. Once you do one pile successfully, you’ll probably become addicted. Nothing like seeing a pile of stinky stuff turn into a sweet smelling powerful garden compost. Then when you plant you mix it in the hole with your azomite and ferts, and I always liked to use it as a mulch on top tho help keep the soil warm. But again, your needs depend on where you live.