Mulches

• Organic vegetable gardening often uses mulches, which are organic material shredded up and then placed into the soil mixture. These mulches come from materials that derive from nature and gardeners can make the mulches themselves.
  
  

Natural Soil

• Forests contain soil that already has the microorganisms, bugs and worms that benefit plants. Removing some of this soil and adding the soil to the garden can provide plants with nutrients that can help them grow more rapidly than they would otherwise grow. While gardeners may fear that the soil will not aerate well enough as it becomes more compact, the gardener must be careful when breaking apart the soil since this process can accidentally kill various organisms in the soil. Instead, the gardener should avoid walking on the soil so that it remains loose. Also, the gardener must not bury the soil too deeply in the ground or many of the microorganisms will die.
  
  

Compost

• Compost is a common food used in organic gardens. Gardeners take organic materials and place them in a compost bin or a tumbling bin to give microorganisms time to break down the organic material. The tumbling bin helps the gardener easily flip over the compost so that the compost remains aerated. However, the gardener can also flip the compost manually with a pitchfork or similar tool. Gardeners then work the compost into the soil. Gardeners sometimes use particular materials such as peat moss and seaweed in their compost because of special properties such as water retention and also because of the nutrient properties of the materials. Gardeners can turn their own yards into compost material by using a mulching mower, which creates grass clippings that work as nutrient sources. The gardener should apply a little bit of the compost material at a time.
  
  

Specific Foods

• Not all plants have the same organic food requirements. Some plants require more nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than others. Vegetable and fruit gardeners who want to create better food will need to study the plants they grow and also learn about the nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium content of different materials. Also, some plants rely on other plants, animals and microorganisms for food. For example, mycorrhizae fungi live in the roots of several species of plants and help increase plant nutrient uptake. The plants produce excess sugars in their roots that the mycorrhizae fungi can eat. Gardeners will want to encourage these types of relationships by incorporating these fungi into the garden.