Organic Vegetable Gardening the Lazy Way

When some gardeners start talking about organic vegetable gardening, it sounds like a cult, and an expensive, time-consuming one at that. It doesn't have to be hard to be organic. My vegetable gardening methods are "organic", not because I have any deep convictions about using organic versus synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, but because I'm a lazy cheapskate. If I can prevent weeds without buying and applying herbicides, grow vegetables without buying and spreading fertilizer, and keep the bugs and other pests under control by letting them kill each other, I'm happy. My budget is happy too.

The vegetables grow in raised beds made from the sides of discarded water beds held in place by 4x4 posts: it's cheap and sturdy. The picture shows the bed, a hopeful quail looking for vegetables to eat, and the soaker hose that minimizes water use. That's an eggplant in the foreground, in late March. By July it was 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide.

Organic Weed Control: My vegetable garden's organic weed control consists of a 4 to 6-inch deep layer of mulch, made by running the prunings from my trees and bushes through my chipper-shredder. Only a few weed seeds will come through the mulch, and they are easy to pull. The mulch also reduces the amount of watering I have to do by preventing evaporation.

The drawback to the mulch is that it attracts birds. The quail love to dig holes in it to make shady resting spots under the vegetables. The curve-billed thrashers and the towhees dig through it hunting for bugs. They are excellent bug controllers, but they throw mulch out of the beds and leave huge holes in the dirt. I have to throw the mulch back into the beds a couple of times a week.

Organic Fertilizer: Tree shreddings composted with the high-nitrogen beans that fall from mesquite trees and the grass clippings from the lawn, make good fertile soil for the raised vegetable beds. I mixed compost 50/50 with the alkaline native dirt the first year and just keep digging more compost into the beds every spring.