Organic Farming: Using Neem as a natual organic insecticide

Neem is a tree found primarily in India. Neem has been used for a long time for a variety of purposes in India, such as a natural toothbrush, its dried leaves are used when packing clothes so as to protect against insects. In addition, the oils from Neem are used as part of making soap for bathing and for cleaning. Going further on this line, Neem is very helpful against insects and pests, and is an integral part of organic principles. For organic farming, it is mandatory that any treatment of insects and pests be done without using chemical insecticides; it does not prevent the use of insecticides, only that they should be naturally occurring materials.
Neem makes for an excellent insecticide. It acts in a different way from chemical insecticides; you apply a chemical insecticide and the insects / pests drop dead or run away. However, Neem acts in a different way. You cannot apply Neem based insecticide, and expect to see the insects dying off in droves. Neem acts to subvert the natural behavior of insects, affecting them internally. So, in some time, you will start to see the insects unable to eat, unable to create eggs or young larvae, in fact, insects seem to forget how to do their normal behavior, and eventually leads to the dying off of the population. This takes time to happen, so the gardener needs to be patient.
Further, the effect of Neem seems to affect only those insects who are categorized as chewing or sucking, so you can stop worrying that all the pollen spreading bees will die off after you apply neem. You of course need to be a bit careful, not using the Neem insecticide during the daytime, instead using it either in the morning or the evening. This way, you do not coat the insects with the liquid, instead the bugs deal with the dried insecticide.
More technical: You need to be careful of what you buy for this purpose. Many stores do not have Neem labelled as an insecticide because of regulations. When you buy one, be sure that it has the following on the label - Azadirachtin. You should take care to buy a Neem product that has 'Azadirachtin' with a high content, and not some substitute that contains hydrophobic extract (will not be powerful enough, but you would not know that and would be disappointed with the results). Also, if you have a pond in your garden, be sure that you do not spray the neem into the pond.
Further, Neem works from inside the plant as well, since the Neem is absorbed by the plant and goes inside the tissues. As and when the insects start consuming the plant, they feel the effect of the Neem insecticide. For some insects, they consume the insecticide, and others get repelled by the smell.
Neem needs to be mixed with water, with around 1 ounce of the insecticide with around a gallon of water. You also need to apply the insecticide on a regular basis, maybe around once every 10-14 days. Further, since useful insects such as bees and lady bugs don't eat the plant, they don't feel any effects of the insecticide. Also, you need to spray the insecticide solution on the potting soil as well.

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Kitchen Garden: Organic farming: Using organic insecticides

If you are into organic farming (or if you are following organic principles for your kitchen garden), then it is very important for you to know all about organic insecticides. One of the problems quote in traditional ways of farming is the use of chemical / synthetic pesticides that leave residues that make their way into animals and humans, and also end up polluting the soil and water. So, what is an organic insecticide ? It is a substance made from natural ingredients that is used for repelling insects and pests; you still need to repel pests and insects even if you go organic.
Organic insecticides are also specialized, in the sense that certain insecticides work on different insects / pests, and you need to do the necessary research to ensure that you have identified the pest you need to get rid of, and what insecticide you need to use. Before making that decision though, ensure that you have actually reviewed that you do have an insecticide or pest problem. Just because an insect is eating away the leaves from your plant does not mean that the plant or the produce is getting harmed (plants can take a loss of upto 25-33% of their leaf cover before their growth is harmed).
Further, ensure that you have also checked out that there are no natural predators that you can use; for example, certain bugs eat insects or pests as a part of nature, and using that solution might work out better. However once you have decided that you have a pest problem that cannot be solved by any other means, then you need to use an organic insecticide.

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Organic Farming: How to prepare the soil ?

Soil preparation is critical if you are going in for organic farming. You do not have the liberty of adding a load of chemical fertilizers later if you find some deficiencies in the soil; and the motto for organic farming remains, "do adequate preparation rather than react later".
Making sure that the soil is healthy is an important first step in the preparation for organic farming. If the soil used for organic farming was earlier used for commercial farming, then you need to spend time to ensure that the presense of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been removed from the soil (how to do this is a separate post), the duration for which you need to have kept such soil clean before using it for organic farming depends on the organic gardening certification in your country or state, and you should check those regulations.
The steps that you should take in order to get your soil ready are:
- Make sure that there are no weeds, stones, or pieces of other debris in the soil, and that it is ready for next steps
- Do a soil analysis. You can get a proper soil analysis done, or you can look at the rough ways of estimating the quality and breakup of your soil. Soil should have 3 main components (sand - 40%, silt 40%, and clay 20%). The soil should be one that you can compress with your hand, and it forms a solid mass that breaks when you poke it. If it either is unable to form a solid mass, or does not crumble when you apply effort, then the soil either has too much sand, or too much clay. An imbalance can result in the soil not being optimum, with imapct on water logging, or the ability of soil to let plants grow in it.
- You can also take a sample of your soil, put it in a glass beaker or jug of water, and then shake, and then let the soil settle down. The settling inside the glass leaves you with 3 different layers, of sand, silt and clay (with clay on top). The levels of each will slowly start giving you an idea of what is missing, and then you can add more of the missing element to get a better mixture. of course, if you are not able to get a correct mixture, go to the store and ask them for the amount of soil you require (make sure that you specify that you are going to grow organically)
- Look to see how you can encourage the growth of healthy stuff such as microbes, earthworms, etc. They do a lot to make your soil better.
- Read up about the various fertilizers you can add to your soil to make up for deficiencies. This would mean that you need to find out what your soil is missing, and requires some amount of knowledge (or if you don't have knowledge, either learn, or get somebody who can advise). Be sure that adding some good compost is typically helpful for the soil.
- Learn about crop rotation, so that you plan ahead for the crops you are going to put in the soil, and learn about which plants add which element, and remove which nutrient from the soil. Doing this is essential if you want to make sure that you soil is good in terms of nutrients, not only now, but for the future.
- Soil is improved when you add organic matter to the soil. This means that you should items such as compost, and even some more strange items such as hair (for nitrogen), grass clippings, purchased organic fertilizer, peat moss
- If you can, enable poultry to have free access to your soil. Hens do a fair amount of the manual hard work required, such as removing weeds, adding manure, and undertaking tilling of the soil.

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Organic Fertilizer: What can you use ?

Now you are onto the organic farming bandwagon, either convinced by the health and environmental benefits, or convinced by the economics of it (or a combination of both). Now you want to know what are some of the fertilizers you can use as a part of organic farming ? After all, it is not possible any more to use the chemical fertilizers since these are not permitted as a part of organic farming, and go against the principles of using organic additives.

Compost: Compost is an excellent organic fertilizer that provides a rich source of nutrients to the soil. Making compost is not very complicated, the only thing it takes is some attention and time required for converting the organic waste to compost (months usually). It also helps in utilizing waste such as leaves, kitchen waste (except for meat), etc.

Nitrogen: Nitrogen in the soil is provided through the system of plant rotation, where nitrogen enhancing plants (that provide legumes) such as Alfalfa (as another example, potatoes should be grown on soil where sweet corn has been grown, since sweet corn adds to the soil what potato needs).

Livestock manure: Livestock manure is a natural method of adding nutrients into the soil and making it richer, a practice that has been followed since the beginning of farming. It is only in recent times that fertilizers started getting used; however, getting livestock manure as fertilizer for organic farming works fairly well.

Seaweed and kelp: This is an additive that is often ignored, but should be used. For those near sea coasts, this is plentiful, and provides nutrients, including materials that are not found elsewhere.

Compost tea: This additive sounds a bit strange, but is actually rich runoff during the composting process. Make sure that you have provisions to collect it, and use it as another fertilizer. It works great with potted plants.

Naturally occurring minerals such as mine rock phosphate, sulfate of potash and limestone are also considered organic fertilizers.

Slurry: A mixture of animal waste and water is used as organic fertilizer

Vermicompost: This is a mixture of decomposing vegetable / food waste, bedding materials, and pure vermicast produced during the course of normal vermiculture operations. This mixture contains water-soluble nutrients and bacteria, and makes for rich fertilizer, ideal for organic usage.

Guano: It is the excrement (feces and urine) of seabirds, bats, and seals. Soil that is deficient in organic matter can be made more productive by addition of this manure. Guano is rich in phosphorus and is an effective phosphorus fertilizer.

Blood meal: Blood meal is dried, powdered blood used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer. It is one of the highest non-synthetic sources of nitrogen and if over-applied it can burn plants with excessive ammonia. Blood meal is completely soluble and can be mixed with water to be used as a liquid fertilizer.

Epsom Salts: Commonly used to provide magnesium and sulfur to the soil. Promotes bushier growth and more flowers.

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How to start an Organic Garden - tips

What do you mean by Organic Gardening ?
Organic Gardening primarily means not using synthetic products such as fertilizers and pesticides. It means working much more closely with nature, and using natural means to increase the level of ingredients and essential materials such as nitrogen to the soil, and using natural means to counter pests such as insects.
An important part of going organic is that you need to change your style of dealing with problems. In normal gardening, where you do not have to follow organic principles, you can deal with pests once they occur by treating them with pesticide; you can deal with scarcity of nutrients by adding fertilizer. If you are following organic gardening principles, what you really need to do is to try and prevent problems rather than having to deal with them as they occur. Taking the initial steps to make your garden healthier results in having fewer problems to deal with and healthier plants, fewer pest and disease problems.
As a part of this, you need to make sure that your soil is healthy, has all the required nutrients, that you take care to ensure that the plants you are planting are healthy (and you have enough knowledge of the plants you are planting in terms of their requirements and their growth cycles), that you check your plants on a regular basis and have setup a frequency of checking along with a checklist of what to check. It is very important to have a knowledge of the pests in your garden, as not all insects and animals in the garden are harmful (many insects and animals actually help in pest control); further, the damange inflicted by some pests can be minimal and not really affect your plants.
The insistence of not using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is an important part of the growth of an organic garden, and not to be compromized with. It is more of a mind set change that you need to rule out the use of such chemicals. This does not mean that you cannot use pesticides, there are a whole range of pesticides and insect repellants that are based on organic ingredients and which are overall of benefit to the environment (the run-off of pesticides and fertilizers into water systems is now a major environmental and health problem).
Finally, let me round off this summary of organic gardening principles with this definition:

"an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony"

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Benefits Of Tulsi Tea

This tea is made from the tulsi herb - also known as holy basil. Tulsi has been revered in India for over five thousand years, as a healing balm for body, mind and spirit, and is known to bestow an amazing number of health benefits.The tea itself tastes good and can be enjoyed either hot or cold. It's a good thing to include this tea in your wellness regime and make it part of your day, every day. This herbal tea does not have any caffeine.Prepare it like 'normal black' tea. Infuse the tulsi in gently boiled water and let it steep for a couple of minutes. It is particularly refreshing in the summer enjoyed cold with ice and a squirt of lemon.
Tulsi Tea's antioxidants protect cells from the damage caused by free radicals that facilitate the cause and progression of various types of diseases.
This herbal brew’s adaptogens serve as powerful anti-stress agents that protect your body from a wide range of health concerns.
The adaptogens guard against and deal with physical, chemical, environmental, and emotional factors that produce high levels of stress that compromise physical and mental health.
The relaxant properties that are found in hot basil tea, extend to both respiratory and digestive tracts and so relieves symptoms of colic, constipation, nausea, asthma and coughs. Other benefits of Tulsi Tea: it can reduce fevers and moves phlegm build up during times of suffering colds and flu.

* Assists in Sharpening Memory and Concentration
* Tonic for Nerves and Treats Irritability
* Reduces Stress
* Promotes Calmness and Clarity
* Clears Phlegm from Chest and Nose
* Eases Symptoms of Colds, Flu, Coughs and Sore Throats
* Strengthens the Stomach
* Treats Vomiting and Nausea
* Improves Metabolism
* Aids in Treating Constipation
* Strengthens the Kidneys
* Known as a Anti-Stress Agent or 'Adaptogen'
* May Reduce Blood Cholesterol
* Assists in Treating Insomnia

Tulsi tea can be enjoyed throughout the day, from morning to night. However, even one cup of Tulsi tea a day is beneficial.

Tips for growing organic food - 1

Organic food has a lot of promises. At the very base level, organic food meets the expectation of people that their food be grown without a fertilizer and chemical cocktail. In organic farming, some of the concepts revolve around food growing practices that rely on crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation to maintain soil productivity and control pests. Some of the practices that are strictly excluded include limiting the use of synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, plant growth regulators, livestock feed additives, and genetically modified organisms. Demand for organic food has grown massively.
What are some of the tips that one should follow when attempting to start the process of growing organic food.
1. Be convinced about not using weed killers and pesticides to your garden. If you are not convinced, then there is no point in going organic.
2. When starting out, do not plant in areas close to walls or fences. Such areas could be contaminated by paint, heavy chemicals, metals, etc.
3. Search for areas in your garden that received sun or are in partial shade the year round.
4. Clean the entire area, including removing earlier plants (if starting out organic the first time). Use a shovel if necessary to remove the roots from earlier plants.
5. Get into the habit of using organic compost material (learn how to prepare compost - an excellent growth material for the soil)
6. Prepare the garden by spreading leaves / already prepared compost all over your garden. This ensures that your garden gets its fill of organisms that are beneficial to it.
7. Once you have spread the compost / leaves / other such organic material over the soil of the garden, turn the top soil over, mixing the soil with the organic material so as to make sure that the top layer of the soil is very rich.
8. Water the soil frequently so as to make sure that it remains damp (not a flowing river though); this ensures that organisms get a good environment to propagate in
9. Do not take steps that could harden the soil - this includes stepping on the soil yourself, or moving heavy objects on the soil.
10. Learn about crop rotations for getting different sorts on nutrients in the soil.
This is it for this post. In the next post, there will be more details on how to get a good organic garden up and running.