March: Beginning to Work Your Garden

Switching to organics is important. We are polluting our waterways with the use of chemical fertilizers. We are poisoning our soils with the use of pesticides. We are placing our family and pets at risk; we are weakening our plants as well. Feed the soil and the soil will feed the plant. The food web will take care of the rest. This is nature’s way. The organic way is the best way to grow strong, healthy plants. If we all work together, we can help preserve the beauty of this earth.

Last year we wrote our programs for organic gardening in the hope that we could persuade people to switch to a gardening approach that made sense for our environment that would be beneficial not only to our health, but to the health of our children and our pets—and that would produce superior quality plants in everyone’s gardens. Those who religiously followed our monthly recommendations reported terrific success. In one year we have learned a lot; we have also made some changes to our programs. We hope that in light of our successes we can get as many people as possible to switch to organic gardening programs in 2008. It is an easy switch. We are convinced that by following our organic programs, we can help you make your garden more beautiful than ever. Our programs are posted on the Sprainbrook Web site.

We changed all of our greenhouse procedures to follow an organic approach. Instead of sprays, we used beneficial insects, and instead of chemical fertilizers like Miracle-gro or Peter’s Special, we used organic fertilizers. We added microbes to the soil and continued to spray with Messenger. We found a great new organic fertilizer called Daniels, which we added to our program.

We have had a mild winter. If temperatures continue to hold, we should get through this year with a minimal amount of winter injury. The late February snow was a blessing, protecting our plants from any late winter cold snap and inspiring anticipation of the spring to come. Spring does always come, and when the sun shines and the temperatures become warmer, we as gardeners experience our full glory.