Below you’ll find 11 of the coolest and most useful organic products for the serious or novice organic gardener. We’ve looked hard to find items that are safe for you, your family, and the environment and that work great. What’s more, you’ll find that they are just as effective chemically-based products.
1. Tumbleweed Compost Bin
The Tumbleweed Compost Bin is one of the coolest composters on the market. It has a unique patented design that allows for quick aerobic decomposing of organic material, and well-mixed compost. It tumbles vertically and has a steel rod in the middle of the compost bin. Tumbling ensures that your compost will be well aerated. This speeds the decomposing process and reduces odors. The Tumbleweed is designed to have virtually no smell so it won’t attract pests.
The steel rod in the middle of compost this bin further aids the process of mixing and decomposing. Even when the compost inside the Tumbleweed gets heavy, it’s still easy to turn and mix. Because of its ease of use and unusual design, members of the National Home Gardening Club gave the Tumbleweed Compost Bin a 100% Approval Percentage rating. Read the results of their test.
Compost is one of the most important ingredients in organic gardening. By building up the soil with compost, you can improve soil drainage, pH, and nutrient content. This means your plants will be healthier, and more resistant to pests and disease. Using compost will also help you reduce the amount of fertilizers you need in your garden and landscaping.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of compost, please see this handy composting guide.
2. Mycor Root Builder
Mycorrhizae are tiny, naturally occurring beneficial fungi that attach themselves to plants’ roots. They help plants to extract organic nutrients from the soil. Unfortunately, many garden soils are poor in mycorrhizal fungi. The good news is that you can stimulate their growth and get them to work more efficiently with Garden-Ville Mycorrhizal Fungi Root Builder. This natural gardening product contains Endomycorrhiza, Ectomycorrhiza, Scleroderma, Kelp, Zeolite, and Humate. It will work to green up and improve the health of ornamental and edible plants in your garden, and even turf grass. You can apply it to new transplants or you can penetrate deeper into the soil with a coring drill or auger to treat established plants.
For more information about mycorrhizal fungi, please see this website.
3. Fish Meal Natural Fertilizer
Fish meal is a natural fertilizer that gardeners and farmers often used before the advent of inorganic fertilizers. Thankfully, this natural gardening product is still readily available on the market today. It contains important trace elements, making it a complete plant food. Fish meal is rated as a 10-5-0 organic fertilizer. This means that fish meal works quickly to feed your plants and provides plenty of phosphorous and organic nitrogen. Avoid over fertilizing your plants, use a mild natural fertilizer like fish meal fertilizer instead!
You can read more about the benefits of fish meal and other natural garden amendments at this University of Florida website.
4. Organic Kelp Meal
Kelp meal is a great fertilizer for all your garden plants and even your lawn. In addition to organic material, kelp has a high content of plant growth hormones and essential minerals. Kelp meal fertilizers are made from brown seaweed harvested from cold ocean waters. After harvest, the kelp is dried and ground into a powder.
Kelp meal provides a slow, sustained release of nutrients instead of the quick injection of minerals that some chemical fertilizers provide. With some chemical fertilizers, your plants may not actually be able to absorb all the fertilizer, so it ends up running off or leaching into the ground. A slower released fertilizer ensures that your plants will use all that they need with minimal waste. Look for kelp meals that are certified as organic!
5. Electronic Soil Tester
We all know that successful gardening starts off with high quality soil. But how do you know if your soil has the proper nutrients, moisture, drainage, and pH to grow a great garden? An electronic soil tester can help.
Electronic soil testers allow you to check the conditions of the soil so that you can adjust the soil when needed. You can test things like total combined nitrogen, phosphorus and potash levels, pH, soil moisture, and even light intensity.
To use this handy garden gadget, simply take a sample, insert the probes, and select the kind of test you’d like to take. You can compare the pH against the recommended levels to determine if a fertilizer treatment is needed. When you use the tester near plant roots, you can take a reading of soil moisture to see if your plants need a drink. In addition to soil and moisture tests, you can see if your plants are getting enough light with the photocell on top of the meter.
This is a great tool for all gardeners that will take the guess work out of many of your gardening chores.
6. Waistie Garden Apron
The Waistie Garden Apron is the ultimate gardening gadget for when you’re doing daily pruning, deadheading, or harvesting in the garden. This garden apron includes pouches for holding tools and a large pocket useful for filling with cuttings, herbs, tomatoes, etc. When you’re ready to empty it, just use the handy zipper and there you go! You’re ready to fill it up again. A great feature is that the apron keeps your hands free to concentrate on your garden tasks. The Waistie garden apron is also ergonomically designed to save your from back from stress and strain.
7. HastaGro Organic Liquid Lawn Fertilizer
Ideally, you should leave your grass clippings on the lawn after you mow to decompose and naturally add organic material to the soil. This will cut back on the amount of fertilizer you need apply to your lawn. However, you’ll probably need to fertilize the lawn every once and a while. The best fertilizer you can use in this case is a natural or organic fertilizer.
When you fertilize your grass, try out HastaGro Organic Liquid Lawn Fertilizer. This product has a NPK rating of 12-4-8, meaning it will provide all the nutrients your turf needs. It also contains Medina Soil Activator and Humate Liquid Humus.
HastaGro Organic Liquid Lawn Fertilizer is ideal for turfgrass as it works both to stimulate beneficial soil organisms and to give your turfgrass a deep feeding of essential nutrients, making it a highly effective liquid organic fertilizer. Remember that all fertilizers, organic or chemical, need to be applied properly. Read the instructions carefully and don’t apply any kind of fertilizers if it’s not necessary!
8. GreenCure Organic Fungicide
Harmful fungi are a common cause of problems with garden and landscaping plants. Unfortunately, there are not many plants out there that are immune to the effects of soil borne fungal diseases. But before you go out and dump potentially harmful fungicides on your plants, try out GreenCure organic fungicide.
Universities have conducted over 200 trials of GreenCure and have found it to be just as effective as chemical fungicides against powdery mildew, Phomopsis blight, Septoria leaf spot, rose black spot, anthracnose, downy mildew and many other common fungal diseases.
GreenCure contains food grade materials including potassium bicarbonate which are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) by the FDA. I wouldn’t recommend eating it, but I would definitely feel good about using it on my veggie and fruit crops. It is perfect for all your ornamental and edible crops, and even your lawn.
GreenCure is popular with commercial growers for treating larger plots and it is used in many commercial vegetable farms, vineyards, production greenhouses, and orchards. Once applied, it will keep working for up to 2 weeks to help prevent fungal diseases. Additionally, it does not kill beneficial insects and does not accumulate in the soil.
8. Organic Insect Killer
No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you’ll always be dealing with insect pests in the garden. Even if you use organic techniques like companion planting, you may still have occasional invasions of unwanted insects. Fortunately, natural insecticides derived from citrus oils have been found to be very effective for treating most common insects.
Natural Insecticide & Fungicide for Fruits, Vegetables is made from natural garlic and organic peperming oil and kills a host of common insect pests.
If you’re having problems with scales, caterpillars, snails, slugs, adult whiteflies, fire ants, aphids, cabbage loopers, flea beetles, Japanese beetles, leafhoppers, mealybugs, mites, rose chafers, or other common insect pests, this natural insecticide and fungicide will effectively take care of these bugs on contact without harming you, your pets, or the environment. It’s so safe that you can even use it to kill bugs the day you harvest your edible crops.
9. Hot Pepper Wax Animal and Insect Repellent
If you’ve got fruits and vegetables in your garden, then you’ve probably found that there are animals and insects out there that unfortunately enjoy eating them just as much as you do. Gophers, rabbits, squirrels, prairie dogs, and hedge hogs are all potential threats to your crop. So what’s the best way to deal with this problem without harming the environment?
When growing edible crops, we feel that it’s especially important to use safe garden products. After all, why would you want to put potentially harmful chemicals on something you and your family are going to eat?
That’s why Hot Pepper Wax Animal spray is a great alternative to chemical repellents. Animals hate the stuff because it doesn’t come with beer and corn chips like the delicious salsa that people eat, so they won’t bother messing with your garden. You can safely use it on vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, and ornamentals. It contains a concentrated mix of cayenne pepper oils. When you spray it on your plants, it has a food grade wax that helps it stick to the plants so that it won’t wash off easily in the rain.
If you’re worried about residual pepper oils on your vegetables, don’t worry. Simply wash off your veggies and they’re safe to eat. There’s no residual pepper taste. You can even harvest your tomatoes and eat them safely the same day you apply the pepper spray.
10. Ultra Effective Cape Cod Weeder
Everyone struggles with weeds in the garden. Instead of using chemical herbicides, try out a Cape Cod Weeder to get rid of those weeds. This weeder has an ingenious design that makes weeding amazingly easy.
It is designed to remove weeds from the roots without disrupting the soil. You can really get around small areas in your garden with its unique design. There is even a left handed cape cod weeder manufactured by the same company so you can weed with two hands. This handy garden gadget is made by a company that has over 100 years of experience manufacturing gardening tools. This goes to show that some old the oldest ideas and designs are still some of the best!
11. Terracycle Organic Plant Food
TerraCycle organic plant food is an awesome natural gardening product. It takes recycling to a whole new level. The contents are made out of recycled organic waste and the packaging is made from recycled soda bottles! When you purchase Terracycle, you’re not only reducing the use of chemical fertilizers in your own neighborhood, you’re actually cleaning up the environment when you use it!
TerraCycle is great for spraying directly on houseplants and all your outdoor landscaping and garden plants. It is currently used in large-scale commercial agricultural productions as well. Rutgers University tested TerraCycle and found that it outperforms chemical inorganic plant foods.
Having the right tools to grow you seeds in toronto can make the differences between a relaxing time pulling out weeds at your leisure or you pulling your hair out! Although natural gardening is the best way to go about it, there is no reason you cannot get a little bit of help.
A couple of years ago I inherited a pineapple plant from a friend that was moving away from the island. Her fiance had grown it from the top of a store bought fruit, and the plant had been growing happily for a year or so. He told me he believed that pineapple plants were gendered, and that they would not bear fruit without cross pollination.
Seeds in Toronto 