Organic Gardening with Mulch in a Wet Climate

For the first article in this series, I will give a little story about how I got introduced to organic gardening. It was in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada where (you may have guessed this) IT RAINS. And it rains and then again, it rains some more. There I was, a new wife trying to provide good quality foods for my husband. The only resource I knew of was a huge volume of over 1000 pages called "An Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening," by J.I. Rodale, who was probably the grand-daddy of books published on this subject.

So I chose the organic gardening mulching method to protect the young plants from pests. The only problem was the persistent and pervasive moisture in Vancouver. I might as well have issued written invitations to all the slugs in the neighborhood, since in fact they promptly descended upon my garden and ate up all the young plants-right at the stem line.

How we handled the slug smorgasbord is a story in its own right: we thought of trying chopped up glass (harking back to the J.I. Rodale Encyclopedia) but we thought, who wants glass in our garden? The thought of kitty litter to deter the slugs produced similar concerns. So we finally opted for dishes of beer to dehydrate the slugs. (Our neighbor said we should call it "cocktail hour for the slugs"). Well that worked! But since buying beer was so expensive, we started to brew our own in the basement. And the slugs weren't the only beneficiaries of that plan!

Since you must have some desire to do it right, we can cut to the chase: please check out the following, very helpful website: http://www.organicfoodforless.info. Barbara Ellingson is a survivor of advanced spinal cancer diagnosed 3 1/2 years ago. She has had no chemo, radiation or surgery, and is handling this with nutrition. She is an author, and is avidly interested in people's health, and in the practice of sustainable gardening and other sustainable practices that will ensure a long-term future for all of us on this planet. She will appreciate hearing your stories and comments made directly to this blog.