Although the weather has been up and down and unpredictable, it is safe to say that finally, springtime is here.  And for your garden it’s a time of soil preparation, sowing seeds and replanting, preparation to make sure that you get the garden you desire come summer.

Here’s a quick list of the five most important fundamental gardening techniques / activities to keep in mind when gardening at home in April;

1. Lawn care.

The lawn is of course an important feature of any garden, from how it looks, to even how it feels underfoot. That’s why great care should be taken to ensure it stays nice, green and healthy throughout the drier summer months. Make sure you water it adequately (but not with a hosepipe with the current ban!) and give it hand boosts by, for example, treating your lawn with a quality fertilizer.

2. Weed and pest control.

Everything begins growing rapidly in April due to the regular mix of warmer temperatures, rain and sunlight. Therefore, if left unattended weeds can quickly get out of control and begin to take over your garden, making it unsightly. Pests, such as slugs and snails will ravage young plants, so it’s of the utmost importance to tackle them appropriately.

3. Flowers and shrubs.

Bring a burst of colour into your garden by checking out the beautiful plants and flowers available at your local garden centre. You have to remember to prepare the soil adequately before replanting, as well as dividing any overcrowded perennials and transplant them accordingly. 

4. Sowing and growing.

During April or early May, you should be sowing herb and vegetable seeds, as well as annual flowers. You may be tempted to sow all the seeds at once but you’ll be better off doing it in stages to ensure maturity at different times to give you longer enjoyment over the summer.

5. Pruning.

This is the key to improving the appearance of your garden while also encouraging flowers to bloom as the season progresses. By pruning small trees and bushes in early May, this will allow the whole of the growing season for the plants to recover. Any remains can be be used to make a new compost heap or added to an existing one.

Pruning, planting and maintenance. That’s what it takes. Above all else you should of course try to enjoy yourself when gardening so that you get out what you put in.

Colin is writing on behalf of Kings Seeds – Supplier of Vegetable & Flower Seeds

Childhood obesity is a major problem in North America, where annual obesity rates have seen significant gains in recent decades. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of U.S. children and adolescents aged 2-19 are obese, nearly triple the share in 1980. Many studies document the connection between a school’s food environment and dietary behaviors in children. As anyone who grew up in the U.S. public school system can attest, lunches served in the country are highly processed and high in sodium, sugar, and fat.

Initiatives that connect schoolchildren to fresh, healthy foods and that encourage healthy eating habits from a young age are critical to ending the obesity endemic. One example is the U.S.-based 30 Project, which brings together key organizations and activists working on hunger, obesity, and agriculture to talk about their visions for the food system over the next 30 years. The effort is exploring long-term solutions to address obesity and improve the food system by ensuring that everyone has easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables, among other goals.

“Consuming nutrient-packed veggies may be even more important now, considering that obesity has become a nationwide epidemic in the United States and that diabetes is becoming more prevalent across the globe,” said Nourishing the Planet project director Danielle Nierenberg. “It’s important that we teach kids how to eat well and take care of themselves now, as children, so they can continue to take care of themselves as adults.”

With children preparing to begin the school year, Nourishing the Planet offers the following solutions for schools to encourage healthy eating:

·     Connect Local Farmers to Schools: Providing locally sourced foods in school cafeterias improves diets and strengthens local economies. The U.S. state of Vermont is a leader in the nationwide Farm to School movement, which integrates food and nutrition education into classroom curricula and serves local foods in school cafeterias. Over the past decade, 60 percent of Vermont schools have joined the effort, forming a statewide network aided by the state’s Agency of Agriculture, Department of Health, and Department of Education. Children benefit from farm-fresh foods for breakfast and lunch, and local farmers expand their business into a market worth over $40 million. Urban areas across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles, are also participating in this growing movement.

·       Savor Mealtimes: Emphasizing the importance of mealtimes teaches children to appreciate the value and taste of good food. France, which has one of the lowest rates of childhood obesity in Europe, takes lunch very seriously. School lunches are well funded, and every part of the meal is prepared on school grounds in professional-grade kitchens-a stark contrast to the heat-and-serve kitchens in U.S. schools. Kids from preschool to high school are served four- to five-course meals and are encouraged to take time eating and socializing with friends. At some schools, detailed menus even suggest what parents should serve their children for dinner. Soft drink and snack machines are banned from school premises.

·       Implement School Gardens: School gardens provide hands-on opportunities for children to cultivate and prepare organic produce. In the United States, REAL School Gardens creates learning gardens in elementary schools in high-poverty areas of north Texas. The organization has found that the school gardens not only nurture healthy lifestyles and environmental stewardship, but can also improve academic achievement through active participation. REAL School Gardens supports 81 schools, providing daily access to nature for more than 45,000 children and 2,700 educators.

·   Nutrition Education: The city of Chicago’s public school district doesn’t offer mandatory nutrition education as part of its curriculum. To fill this void, the nonprofit Communities in Schools of Chicago (CISC) connects 170 schools to volunteer professionals who run a broad range of programs that address the social, emotional, health, and enrichment needs of students. Demand for nutrition classes has almost tripled in the past four years. This is due in part to the results of a Personal Health Inventory administered by CISC to more than 5,000 students, which showed that nutrition was the lowest scoring area.

  ·  Equal Access to Healthy Foods: Childhood obesity disproportionately affects low-income families that may not be able to afford healthy foods. Schools in Greeley, Colorado, are taking a giant leap forward by cooking every meal from scratch. This is a much healthier alternative to the processed factory-food items that dominate school cafeterias today, and can be more cost effective for poorer school systems that take advantage of U.S. federal reimbursement rules. With 60 percent of the city’s students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, Greeley is proving that it isn’t only rich school districts that can provide their children with healthy meals.

Additional Examples:

• The Community Alliance with Family Farmers coordinates relationships among school cafeterias and local food producers in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, bringing nutritious meals to students who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
• The Fresh from the Farm program in Chicago conducts classroom activities such as tastings, cooking demonstrations, visits from farmers, helping in school gardens, and field trips to local organic farms.
• Revolution Foods delivers tasty and healthy breakfasts, lunches, and snacks to schools in Colorado, California, and Washington, D.C. Many of the ingredients are organic and locally sourced, and no artificial flavors, trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, or milk with hormones and antibiotics are used at all.
• Seeds of Nutrition helps schools in Atlanta, Georgia, start school gardens and teach children how to prepare delicious recipes using the fruits of their labor. The group also collaborates with teachers to create cross-curricular lessons that center on gardens and food.
• The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California, is a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom where inner-city students at a local Middle School participate in all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing seasonal produce.
• New York City’s enormous school district used its market power to pressure vendors to reduce food prices and eliminate unhealthy items, including fried food, artificial ingredients, and trans fats, from its cafeterias. With this welcome change, many children now enjoy fresh fruit, salad bars, whole-grain breads and pasta, and foods made with low-fat and low-sodium recipes.
• In 2010, Italy adopted a nationwide policy to supply all school cafeterias with locally sourced organic food in an effort to curb childhood obesity and preserve culinary traditions. Seventy percent of all school cafeteria food in Rome is now organic, with ingredients coming from 400 Italian organic farms.

Obesity is an immense problem for children growing up in today’s world of processed junk food, but many opportunities exist to reverse this trend. Schools are the most efficient means of transmitting healthy behavioral changes that can last a lifetime to students, families, and communities. It all starts with connecting schools to the best foods available: fresh, organic, and local.

Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet (www.NourishingthePlanet.org) project recently traveled to 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, shining a spotlight on communities that serve as models for a more sustainable future. The project is unearthing innovations in agriculture that can help alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. These innovations are elaborated in the recently released report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

-Gary

Gardening organic is easy to do, when you’ve got tips like these. Mulch, compost and effective pest control are all essential to gardening organic. 

Compost 

Compost is an organic material that has decomposed and is re-used as an organic fertilizer. The rawest form of composting is piling up waste outside and waiting a year or more for it to decompose. Today’s modern form of composting is multi-step with closely measured water, air and carbon and nitrogen-rich materials.

The plant matter is shredded, water is added and the mixture is regularly turned for ideal aeration. Additionally, worms and fungi break up the material further.

To create your own compost, create a pile of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials. Carbon-rich materials are brown in color and include fall leaves, dead flowers, straw and shredded newspaper. Nitrogen-rich materials are green and include grass clippings and plant-based kitchen waste, such as fruit rinds and vegetable peelings. In addition to the carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials, add a few shovelfuls of garden soil. [Ed. Note - don't put eggs or meat in your compost bin.]

To create this compost site, alternate layers of different items- e.g. leaves and grass clippings. If you fill it entirely with greens, such as grass clippings, it will get very hot and decompose quickly, but you don’t want it to get so hot that it risks burning.  After adding greens and leaves, add a thin layer of the garden soil. Finish by moistening all of the layers thoroughly. You can also use an organic compost starter to aid your composting.

Continue this layering until it’s 3-feet high. The ideal ratio is 3 parts carbon-rich material to 1 part nitrogen-rich material.

To help with decomposition, use a garden fork or shovel to turn the pile, every few weeks. You want a compost pile that is moist, but isn’t wet and soggy. If you don’t turn it, it will still decompose, it will just happen more slowly.

Mulch

For organic mulch, use loose, coarse-textured material. Any once-living material can be used as mulch, including pine needles and grass clippings. Water the ground thoroughly before and after you apply the mulch covering.

Mulch not only gives your flowerbeds a neat, finished look, it also prevents the soil drying out, adding humus and other nutrients, while discouraging weeds. Mulching is the equivalent of Mother Nature maintaining a forest floor.

Any acid-loving plants can be mulched with a thick layer of pine needles. Do it each Fall and as the needles decompose, their acid will be deposited into the soil, enriching it.

Any new plantings should not have bare soil visible around them. Make sure you cover all your new plantings with a layer of mulch. It benefits the plants by protecting the plant roots from the sun’s heat during the summer months and the plant crowns from the cold of wintertime.

Pest Control

Did you know homeowners who use chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides apply more per acre than farmers? The result is chemical run-off, harming water-based life and ultimately contaminating the food chain. When you keep your soil healthy, with good mulch and a powerful organic fertilizer, you have a garden that is not only environmentally friendly, but thriving as well.

There are effective organic pesticides that can be used when gardening organic. When selecting your pest control, look for one that has the OMRI Listed logo on its label. This means it has been reviewed and approved for gardening organic.

Now that you received more information on gardening organic, you’d probably like to learn more about organic fertilizers.