Multimedia Assignment (Project 2)

The benefits of organic gardening include maintaining soil fertility and biodiversity, reducing exposure to toxic chemicals, and caring for plants without chemicals. Tips for beginners include selecting a sunny location, using organic soil, testing soil pH, choosing plants suitable for the climate and soil, watering at the roots, and feeding plants with homemade organic fertilizer. Next time, they will discuss designing a garden layout and creating a garden plan. Welcome to Green Thumb Chronicle. We're here cultivating knowledge one plant at a time. I'm your host, Yariel Hernandez, and in today's episode, I will discuss the benefits of organic gardening. My connection to gardening began as a child, watching my grandmothers care for their plants. They were raised in the countryside, children of farmers who toiled over the land to make ends meet. They cared for their gardens without chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers. I want to garden like them and grow healthy vegetables and share some of my knowledge and experience that was passed down from me. What are the benefits of organic gardening? Well, organic gardening utilizes practices that maintain and impose fertility, soil structure, and biodiversity, and reduce erosion. The most beneficial outcome of organic gardening is it reduces exposure to toxic chemicals for humans, animals, and the environment. So let's start with preparing your garden. These are specific tips for beginners. The most important thing is for you to select your site. From personal experience, it saves you time and money. When you choose a location that receives at least 8 to 6 hours of sunlight each day. Another important tip is use great soil. Start with organic soil. Alright, how do you do this? A tip is most vegetables grow best in soil with slightly acidic pH, between 6 and 7, because most nutrients are available in that range. Adding crushed limestone helps make acidic soil more like alkaline. Adding peat moss helps make alkaline soil above 7.0, more acidity. Now to determine the soil pH before adding any additives to your vegetable garden, it is important to either take soil samples for testing or use a commercial soil test kit. When is the best time? Fall is best for testing your soil to prepare for the next spring planting season. Okay, so the next step is let's pick the perfect plant. Let's select plants based on the climate, soil type, and sunlight. The following 8 plants are easy to grow, particularly perfect for beginners. You can choose a variety of blackbells, blackberries and raspberries, cabbage, cucumbers, garlic, strawberry, tomato, zucchini, and squash. Another factor that needs to be taken into consideration, which is extremely important when gardening, is water. You want to aim to water at the roots of the plants rather than the leaves. Watering directly onto the leaves can spread fungal diseases and scorch foliage when the sun hits. People ask all the time, how often should I water organic soil? If you have small containers with a large plant, then you'll need to water it daily. But if you have a large raised bed with smaller plants, you'll only need to water about once a week. Now mind that the temperature and humidity in your environment will also play a large role in watering your plants. Another helpful tip, water in the morning. Early morning, 5 to 9, is the best time to water the garden when using a sprinkler, water hose, or any other device. When watering is completed, the plant foliage dries quickly. The rapid drying of plant foliage helps guard against the development of fungal diseases. The last step that we're going to give for part 1 of this series is how to feed your plants. So you should feed your plants 3 to 4 times a week. Now remember, we are growing an organic garden, so we have to make our own organic fertilizer, which can be made by using manure. You add a handful of aged manure into a bucket of water and allow it to mix and infuse for a day or so, giving it a good stir now and then. This water will then be ready to feed your plants. You'll thank me for this later. So please feel free to leave us comments, questions, any concerns. Again, thank you for joining us today, and tune in next time when we discuss designing your garden layout and tips for creating a garden plan, after we continue part 2 of our Creating Our Very Own Organic Garden. Thank you again, your host, Dariela Hernandez. Let's keep growing. Bye.