Organic Gardening

So I'm trying my hand at some organic gardening since I have a yard this summer. I'm pretty excited about it. I've tried to do a good bit of research about what seeds to buy and how to avoid Monsanto related companies. I live in a rural area, so organic products aren't very easy to come by. I was surprised to see this at my local Wal-Mart:

I needed some organic soil to use in my strawberry planter, so I bought some and used it to plant some strawberry plants before I found out that Scotts/Miracle-Gro has some pretty strong ties to Monsanto, a company that deals some pretty serious damage to the environment with products like Round Up and genetically altered seeds. Oh well, now I know. The strawberry plants I bought weren't organic anyway. Like I said it's tough to find organic products in my area. But I'm going to raise them organically from now on.

I think they will do much better than my previous tries since they are actually out in full sun versus being on a shady apartment balcony like the previous two years.

It was a rainy day and the bones were pretty upset that they couldn't help me plant the strawberries!

I also did some research on organic herbicides and decided to try out the suggestions I found for using vinegar. Some sites said to mix half vinegar and half water, but to use straight up vinegar for stubborn weeds. I opted to try straight up vinegar because I wasn't so sure how stubborn my weeds were.

Here's the before picture:

24 hours later:

So the vinegar worked pretty effectively as and herbicide. I don't think a vinegar/water mixture would have worked as well, but a gallon of vinegar was only around $3 so it didn't seem like an expensive project. I plan on filling the area to the right of the stepping stones with mulch and flowers, that's why I needed the weeds dead.

I also found some organic seeds at Wal-Mart that I plan on using in my garden. They were produced by a company called Plantation Products under the NK seeds brand. Their website assures that their seeds are not genetically altered in any way. They also appear to have no affiliation with Monsanto so I'm going to plant them. I got cantaloupe, beans, and squash. I also want to plant okra, corn, and eggplant so I'll be on the lookout for those seeds.

I can't wait to eat all my own yummy organic vegetables and fruits!