Original Article Written by Jared Brost
A good garden is one that not only looks good but also gives the required returns either in terms of enough crop produced to feed your family or in terms of money after selling the produce. This will be governed by the effort that you put into taking care of our garden.
Are you looking for ways and means of making your garden more productive? Here are some simple tips on how to go about it.
Healthy and nutrients-rich soil/crop support: The foremost thing when it comes to gardening is the soil or the support of your crops in case you are using aquaponics. The place where your crops are planted is the source of nutrients for the crop. You should ensure that it has sufficient nutrients and it is well aerated.
Use of organic fertilizers: When it comes to nutrients, you should try to use the organic manure instead of the expensive inorganic fertilizers.
Organic manure is easily accessible either from animal droppings, crop remains, or composite pits. The organic manure keeps your garden well-nourished while at the same time taking care of the ecosystem in the soil.
Watering the crops: Your crops should be watered regularly. This means that watering should be done at consistent intervals and, at the same time, ensuring that ample water is provided to the crops. Watering/irrigation should be done when the temperatures aren’t too high so that the crops can get enough time to absorb the water before it evaporates. For this reason, watering should be confined to the evening or very early in the morning.
There are various methods of irrigation that you can employ, but drip irrigation is the best since it saves on time and water. In drip irrigation, you can either use inverted water containers at the base of your crops or you can use perforated pipes.
Correct crop choice: When choosing the crops to plant, you should choose crops that are favored by the environment in your locality. Different crops require different environments to grow. Also, it is not all crops that can grow in your locality that are your best choice. You should rather go for a productive crop. One that will withstand the environmental conditions and, at the same time, provide ample and quality produce during harvest.
Weeding: Another thing that you have to do is weeding the garden. You do not want your crops to be competing for the nutrients that you work very hard to provide, with foreign plants that are of no benefit to you. Weeding should be done at regular intervals.
Before doing the weeding, you should first water the ground so as to make it soft and also enable your crops to heal faster in case they are injured while removing the weeds.
Mulching: Mulching should be done to conserve the water in the soil, especially when the temperatures are too high. Instead of buying expensive mulching material, you can simply use compost manure, which will act as a nutrient provider and mulching material at the same time.
Digging: You should dig the garden once in a while so as to help aerate the soil. This makes the conditions in the soil good for the micro-organisms that are very essential in decompositions and absorption of the nutrient by the crops.
Crop diseases control: For you to get a good harvest from your garden, you have to ensure that the crops are free from diseases. Diseases will affect the health of your crops and lead to reduced produce as well as poor quality of produce since some of the diseases affect the produce itself. The most important thing when it comes to disease control is keeping the environment in the garden in a way that it doesn’t allow the disease-causing pathogens to thrive. This can be done through pruning, weeding, and controlling crop pests.
Crop pest control: You should also use organic means to control crop pests in your garden rather than using the chemicals. Some of these non-toxic ways to control crop pests include the use of traps, using Parasitic Nematodes, and crop rotation.
Pruning: Most of the crops require regular pruning. Pruning helps to improve the quality of the produce that you get and also acts as a way of controlling pests and crop diseases.
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