Organic Herb Gardening and Natural Fertilizers

Organic herb gardening is an all natural method for growing delicious herbs in your backyard garden.  If you choose to use conventional chemical fertilizers you run the risk of introducing carcinogens and other toxic matter into your body as you eat your herbs.  At the same time the chemicals you spray on your garden can be harmful to wildlife, your pets, and your children and will also create toxic run-off that can contaminate ground water supply.  The practice of organic herb gardening is becoming very prominent as more and more people become aware of the dangers of conventional gardening, in fact there has been an exponential growth in organic fertilizers and pesticides.  You will actually be amazed at the huge variety of natural fertilizers available for organic herb gardening.

When one begins to explore organic fertilizers options, one should classify the search into base fertilizers and top-off fertilizers.  They are both used regularly in organic herb gardening: base fertilizers are additives that get mixed into the soil once a season or once every few years, instead top-off fertilizers are used in organic herb gardening on a regular basis during the growing season and both kinds are necessary to grow abundant and healthy herbs.  

Base fertilizers concern themselves with the overall condition of the soil.  Does it have enough of the essential nutrients of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium?  Nitrogen is arguably the most important nutrient for growing healthy herbs, and also one of the easiest elements to get. In fact it can be obtained from household kitchen waste and grass clippings.  In organic herb gardening practice, composting is a simple and safe method of fertilizing the herbs naturally. Just a handful mixed in with the soil activates the bacteria in the earth and helps the seeds develop into strong plants.

When a keen gardener has to choose how to supplement his plants with fertilizers, he gets into a dilemma because most of the commercial fertilizers are chemical based. However, very few people that practice organic herb gardening know that there is a brilliant alternative to the chemical fertilizers that can be home grown:  comfrey. Comfrey is used an herb with large leaves which is a native of Europe and grows prolifically in the garden. As a matter of fact the leaves can be harvested five times a year. Its roots contain all the essential nutrients for the plant growth like phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium and when used as mulch for organic herb gardening it acts as a complete fertilizer. In addition to that, a few comfrey leaves added to the compost heap speed up the breakdown of organic matter making it possible to obtain larger quantities of compost and faster.

Blood and bone is a light top-off fertilizer that can be sprinkled on the herbs once a week and is absorbed into the soil once the rain comes.  On the other hand, one of the most potent top-off fertilizers adopted in organic herb gardening is fish emulsion which is essentially pureed fish that is rich in nitrogen and can be sprayed on or added to the watering can and used fortnightly to fertilize the herbs.

Because natural fertilizers are all slow release, they are especially great for organic herb gardening as they do not damage the roots and allow the herbs to grow steadily through multiple harvests.