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Organic gardening is not simply an excuse to neglect your garden, or an excuse to waste extra money on “organic” feeds, fertilizers and other garden products. Home composting really should be at the heart of all moves towards organic gardening. Heck, even if you have no interest in green living, or going organic you should still be making compost at home anyway!

Yes, compost is work, but it is so worth it. I have been composting at home for too long to say. I’ve done it in small urban gardens where a compost tumbler was essential for keeping things tidy (and the compost coming quickly), and on huge vegetable plots with simple home-made brick compost heaps that could never keep up with the demand of all those vegetables!

It doesn’t matter whether you have a small flower bed or a huge vegetable plot, the benefits of home composting are more than worth the effort:

1. by recycling your organic waste you reduce your impact on the environment by sending less to land-fill or incinerators.
2. you reduce the need for additional fertilizers since compost is full of the nutrients needed by plants.
3. you can reduce the need for watering, weeding and mulching by applying a generous layer of your home produced compost to the soil.
4. by making your plants strong and healthy you will reduce the need for pest and disease control products.
5. you simply get to be a slightly more “smug” gardening, by knowing you are doing your bit!

Home composting might seem like a hassle at first. If you read much about it, you might feel it is all rather complicated, what with finding the perfect mix of ingredients, and the right temperature. In truth, if you leave a pile of organic waste long enough it will compost down naturally over time, and it takes very little to help this process along.

A good mixture of brown (think woody plant material, paper and card) and green (think vegetable peelings and grass clippings), plus plenty of insulation in colder climates should see your compost heap working it’s magic in no time!

Gardening may look simple, but the reality is that there are so many variables that it soon becomes extremely complex.  The most important variable, perhaps, is the weather. 

I live in a city called Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and the Chiang Mai weather is unlike anything you’d be used to in the west.  Here in Chiang Mai we have three distinct seasons: two monsoons and one hot season, and it plays merry hell with gardening.

The Chiang Mai weather is so changeable throughout the year that the surrounding countryside covers every colour of the rainbow, from lush, deep green in the wet season to grey and black in the hot, dry season.  The Chiang Mai weather also makes it nigh on impossible to grow anything in a small personal garden.

I’ve been trying to grow tomatoes the the last year – you can’t get really good ones in the shops here – but the Chiang Mai weather is screwing up my efforts.  During the wet season I see fantastic growth, with perfect conditions for my tomatoes.  But as soon as the dry season comes around my efforts go to pot.  The dry, hot air kills everything off, and I’m on the verge of just giving up altogether.  

Fortunately I have something to take my mind off my dying crops.  My younger brother is visiting from the UK next week, so I’ve spent a few days coming up with a list of things to do in Chiang Mai.  I’ll leave my tomatoes for a few days and head off to Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand, where at this time of year I’ll see what God can do with his garden when he sets his mind to it. 

Although it’s a widespread hobby, allotment gardening is not for everyone. However, having just read an interesting blog post about how to grow vegetables at home, I’m a bit more convinced that it’s something worth (at least!) considering. I’ve always been the type to cook from scratch and I do, where possible, buy organic and naturally grown foods as much as possible.

However, that’s not always as easy as the world at large would have you think, and neither is it cost effective. For some reason, organically grown produce is often more expensive than the food that’s been genetically modified (why I don’t know … don’t chemicals cost money?!) and, well … in the current financial climate, anything that will help me to cut down the grocery budget will be most welcome.

Now (from what I understand) this grow your own vegetables stuff will take some time and effort, and even if I start now it’s going to be next year before I can start to reap the benefits. However, the good thing is that once I start cultivating my own vegetables, I’ll (hopefully) be able to generate a yearly crop of home grown produce that will have cost me little more than the time, effort and seeds.

Currently I’m seriously contemplating turning over some of the back yard into a vegetable patch (or whatever they’re known as) and investing a little money in buying the necessary planting equipment and seeds. I know the soil’s good, I know what type of vegetables I would like to grow, so all I’ve got to do now is decide on whether I want to make a start, learn a bit more about it and then … well – start digging!