I learned from a friend who was passionate about organic gardening and loved propagating houseplants too.
I would read Organic Gardening and talk to nurserymen at every opportunity about flowers, ground coverings, trees, annuals and perennials.
When I applied for a job at Sassafras Nursery in Topanga Canyon, the lady asked me to name the plants and I knew most of them.
It's not difficult to be an organic gardener. You just don't use poisons (Pesticides) or chemical fertilizers. Creating beautiful soil is all about amending with nutritious compost.
Healthy soil is the basis of healthy gardens. My Up-country soil is rich in nutrients and I continue to enrich it with compost made from every vegetable scrap from the kitchen, including coffee grounds, egg shells, grass cuttings, leaves and weeds that have been layered and moistened, turned until it becomes a rich brown soil. I'm going to write a series on How to plant beautiful gardens. This will start with preparing the soil, dreaming up your designs, choosing seeds, keeping a garden journal, creating raised beds, planters, potted gardens, digging in the earth wherever you live. I have planted in Sun Valley, California in complete sandy soil at the bottom of a dry riverbed, in Malibu above the sea in the rockiest, clay mixtures, in Topanga Canyon, Pine Mt. Club, California where decomposing granite makes for rocks everywhere and I always create beautiful gardens. Sometimes you just plant between the rocks. I always dig a foot deep and add a nice potting soil to the mix as well as lots of compost to enrich and aerate the earth.
~ Marilyn 808 283-9131 Marilyn Jansen Lopes
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