How To Grow Organic Vegetables In Your Backyard Without Doing Any Gardening

December 19, 2008 in Gardening |

Anybody who is interested in personal health and the environment would love to grow organic vegetables in their own backyard, but many people simply do not have the time or the knowledge to cultivate their small or not-so-small piece of land. However, there are other options that will save you from spending all of your precious weekends digging and weeding.

Outsourcing

The first option is outsourcing. Or, in more traditional language, hiring somebody to do the work for you.

Gardeners can be found in most locations. These days you will usually hire a company or small business rather than one person, but this has its advantages in terms of reliability. It may be more difficult to find someone who is a specialist in organic gardening, and specifically in growing vegetables without the use of artificial chemicals.

The cost may seem steep but consider what you are getting. Not only your own home-grown vegetables without any effort on your part, but also a well maintained garden that will be the envy of your neighbors and friends. Plus the company will usually bring their own tools, so you will not have to invest in equipment.

Garden share cropping

Another option that can be found in a growing number of cities in the USA is a form of that old fashioned way of farming known as share cropping. Traditionally, a landowner would allow tenants or share croppers to grow produce on his land, taking a share of the crop instead of charging rent in dollars.

In its modern form this can work in a number of ways. The simplest is that a small business will work the garden land of many householders in an area and the resulting organic fruit and vegetables are shared between the owners of the gardens and the gardening company, who usually sell their share to local health food stores or through an organic food delivery scheme.

The advantage of this over hiring a gardener is that there will probably be no cost. One possible disadvantage is that the company will want to grow certain things that they know they can sell, which may not be what you would most like to have in your garden. However, you should be able to negotiate on this.

In some cases, such as the MyFarm service in San Francisco, the company may charge a fee to work as your gardener but offer the option of a much lower fee if you allow them to take a share of the crop.

Either way this kind of scheme can be a great service for anybody who does not want to pay per hour to have their garden cultivated. At this time it is limited to a few cities, mostly in California or the north western states, but you may be able to persuade a local organic farmer or gardener to take on the land in your garden on a share cropping basis.

Try asking local health food stores and delivery schemes for details of their organic fruit and vegetable suppliers. These people are often working small areas of rented land and may be delighted to share crop your garden so that you can grow organic vegetables without having to do any gardening yourself.

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