Here are some of the most common organic pesticides, a few of which can be easily made right in your home.

Tobacco Spray — This homemade spray is effective for repelling bugs like caterpillars and aphids. All you need to do is mix one cup of tobacco with about a gallon of water and set it aside for about 24 hours. Then you would apply it as a spray to your crops.

Garlic Spray — When garlic, water, onion, cayenne pepper and a little liquid dish soap are mixed together, it is the perfect remedy for getting rid of slugs. And, you will not have to worry about the effect on the environment, your crops or your family.

Insecticidal Soap – This actually consists of potassium salts with fatty acids, and can be sprayed directly onto insects. It is a totally non-toxic formula and leaves no residue whatsoever.

Pyrethrin — Pyrethrin is a product that is derived from the chrysanthemum plant. It is used in powdered form and dusted onto the leaves to poison insects. Although there is low toxicity to animals, it is still a very suitable product for organic pesticide treatment.

Sabadilla — These are seeds produced by the sabadilla lily. For the purpose of protecting your crops, they are ground and used together with water as a spray on the plants and insects. However, the downside to this particular product is that it affects the mucous membranes in mammals, hence not being a completely safe option.

Horticultural Oil — This is a highly refined petroleum oil that can be mixed with water and sprayed on foliage to kill insects. It actually accomplishes this by coating the insects and suffocating them. The good news is it is completely non toxic to mammals.

There are several other organic pesticides that can be used on your crops to eliminate the need for chemical-based products that end up causing more harm than good. Ensure you cater to the health of your family members by giving them crops that are safe and healthy.

As the name suggests, raised bed organic gardening involves making a garden in a bed that is raised from the ground. This type of gardening is beneficial in an area where there are water logging problems. Often times, people’s gardens end up not doing so well because of water logging problems, so raised bed organic gardening is certainly a good alternative.

Raised bed gardens are quite easy to construct, and there are just a few factors that you should consider if you happen to be thinking about this as a new hobby.

Site Selection – Naturally, it is important to choose a location in your yard that is suitable for your raised bed organic garden. This is especially true with permanent structures that you do not have any plans of moving anytime soon. Just remember that your bed will need to have direct access to sunlight and a level surface so there is no chance of anything spilling over.

Design – Before you start building your raised bed organic garden, you should probably try to draft the design on paper. Once you have an idea of how it should look, you can start considering measurements. The suitable raised bed organic garden should be about 5’ wide and 6” high. The length of the garden would be based on how much space you have in your backyard. Just make sure that wherever you build it, you have enough space to access all four sides.

Frame – You must always consider how you will frame your raised organic garden to avoid erosion during rains. Some of the popular materials for framing include stone, brick and rot-resistant wood.

Soil – The type of soil in your organic garden will directly impact the quality of the produce you grow. Try to mix organic matter like dry leaves and grass with the soil and add a little sand. This will help to improve the drainage.\

Once you follow these simple tips for making your raised bed organic garden, you can start putting plans together for creating one of your own. This promises to be one of those hobbies you will thoroughly enjoy, especially when you start seeing the fruit of your labor.

1. It would suit you to start your backyard organic garden by making a compost heap. Composting is very effective at improving the quality of soil, which is an important factor in successful backyard organic gardening. To make the perfect compost, you can use grass trimmings, egg shells, food waste as well as peels from oranges and other fruit. These natural products provide the well needed nutrients to the soil so you get the best quality possible.

2. Whenever you are trying to decide on the type of foliage for your backyard organic garden, you should consider choosing vegetables, fruits and plants that are ideally suited to your climate, environment and the type of soil you have. Remember that not all plants will thrive in the same conditions, so you should spend some time researching what suits your yard and what will yield the best results.

3. Inter-planting is a very good idea when it comes to backyard organic gardening. What this means is having a diversity of flowers and other plants to help protect your edible crops against insects and pests. The slight problem with organic gardening is that pesticides and insecticides are not used, which are what usually keep the pests away. The natural alternative to that would be planting flowers that attract beneficial insects around the vegetables and fruits.

4. Try to plant flowers like dahlias and chrysanthemums in the garden around your vegetables and fruits because they have naturally strong scents that repel bugs. These scents are otherwise referred to as olfactory inhibitors. These flowers act as traps to lure insects away from your crops because of the strong scents they have. And these flowers also attract beneficial insects.

5. Choose easy to grow crops like melon, cucumbers, tomatoes, greens and herbs. You will always get good results because these crops are very simple to grow.

Backyard organic gardening can be a lot of fun and promises a healthier result in terms of the crops you produce for consumption.

Instead of using industrial insecticides to keep the plants healthy and make them flourish, organic gardening uses natural pest control. That means that natural substances as well as beneficial insects are used to ward off pests that are prone to attacking plants and vegetables.

With organic gardening, there are a few important things to always remember:

– It is always important to try and increase the natural health of the soil you are planting in. One way to do this is to add natural composting materials to it so it continues to get the nutrients it needs, and will subsequently feed the plants growing there.

– Choosing the appropriate plants for your organic garden is also an important factor in ensuring you get successful growth. Make sure you work with plants that thrive in your kind of environment and grow well amongst the other types of foliage you have.

– Organic gardening focuses on working with nature to produce a healthy garden with healthy soil. It is always important to remember that organic gardening relies on natural products and elements of nature to help the plants grow healthily.

Although organic gardening is not really a new concept, it is slowly being revived and is resurfacing after many years of being kept in the dark by chemical gardening. For a long time, chemically grown plants were the order of the day. In fact, farming became a chemical-based activity in the 1840s after scientists in a lab discovered that plants could actually grow in test tubes filled with chemicals. Because it was cheaper and easier to use chemicals to grow the plants, farming just evolved into that kind of activity. However, after people realized that there was more harm than good being done by chemically grown plants, organic gardening started to show its face again.

There are several benefits to organic gardening, including the following:

– There are higher levels of essential vitamins and nutrients in organically grown food compared to food that is chemically grown. This means your organic vegetables and fruits will stand a better chance of helping you fight disease than the ones grown with chemicals.

– Consuming organically grown food reduces the intake of harmful products like pesticides, fertilizers and growth hormones. Of course, this results in safer food consumption and subsequently a much healthier body.

– Organic gardening results in fruits and vegetables that actually taste better than those that are chemically grown.

There are various growing techniques that can be employed in organic gardening, and in terms of making the soil healthy, kitchen scraps can be used for fertilizing or composting.

If you happen to be interested in a healthier way of eating as well as gardening, you should consider organic gardening as your first option, because your plants, family and the environment will be healthier in general as a result. In a time where ill health is being caused by all sorts of synthetic products, your best bet would be to go the natural and healthy way by doing gardening on your own.