What do you know about the three M’s when it comes to organic gardening? The Smiling Gardener gives the low down on how to help flowers, plants and crops reach their full potential through simple methods that don’t hurt your garden. He also explains what to avoid. (Start watching from about 1 minute into the video to get to the relevant bits).

The first M is for Mulch. Mulch protects the soil, keeps it moist, stops weeds from growing and provides valuable nutrients. But don’t use bark mulch. It has limited nutrients and usually contains mild toxins for protecting the original tree against pests. Equally stones and rocks hinder the natural breaking down of other ingredients, so avoid these in your mulch.

So what should your mulch comprise? Leaves are full of nutrients and break down easily to release those nutrients. In this way they act as a free organic fertiliser as well as providing the other benefits of mulch (see above). As autumn begins, now is the time to start gathering your leaves. Mulch should be used all year round to gain its maximum benefit.

The second M is for microbes. Almost more important than nutrients is ensuring your soil has a healthy ‘food web’. Adding organic compost to the soil is the best way to help add beneficial micro organisms to the soil. Compost tea is another option for putting directly on leaves. If you don’t produce enough compost from your own garden, buy some organic compost or use microbial inoculents.

The third M is for moisture. Like humans, plants cannot survive for long without water. It helps with photosynthesis, it helps keep the plants cool and it helps transport nutrients around the plant.

The key point is to ‘water deep’. This means make sure you are watering enough to allow the moisture to penetrate down to root level. When you water shallow, the moisture remains at the top of the soil, and the root system does not grow as deep. If this happens the root system is less stable, and less nutrients are drawn up into the plant. Your soil type will dictate how often you need to water. Heavy clay soils will retain much more moisture than sandy soils.

Although the third M, moisture, seems obvious, it is a very valid point to make. A common mistake is to water often but not deep. This is organic gardening advice at its best because it’s simple and straightforward. Use the three M’s and you can’t really go wrong.

Filed under: Organic Farming

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