Soil preparation is critical if you are going in for organic farming. You do not have the liberty of adding a load of chemical fertilizers later if you find some deficiencies in the soil; and the motto for organic farming remains, “do adequate preparation rather than react later”.
Making sure that the soil is healthy is an important first step in the preparation for organic farming. If the soil used for organic farming was earlier used for commercial farming, then you need to spend time to ensure that the presense of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been removed from the soil (how to do this is a separate post), the duration for which you need to have kept such soil clean before using it for organic farming depends on the organic gardening certification in your country or state, and you should check those regulations.
The steps that you should take in order to get your soil ready are:
- Make sure that there are no weeds, stones, or pieces of other debris in the soil, and that it is ready for next steps
- Do a soil analysis. You can get a proper soil analysis done, or you can look at the rough ways of estimating the quality and breakup of your soil. Soil should have 3 main components (sand – 40%, silt 40%, and clay 20%). The soil should be one that you can compress with your hand, and it forms a solid mass that breaks when you poke it. If it either is unable to form a solid mass, or does not crumble when you apply effort, then the soil either has too much sand, or too much clay. An imbalance can result in the soil not being optimum, with imapct on water logging, or the ability of soil to let plants grow in it.
- You can also take a sample of your soil, put it in a glass beaker or jug of water, and then shake, and then let the soil settle down. The settling inside the glass leaves you with 3 different layers, of sand, silt and clay (with clay on top). The levels of each will slowly start giving you an idea of what is missing, and then you can add more of the missing element to get a better mixture. of course, if you are not able to get a correct mixture, go to the store and ask them for the amount of soil you require (make sure that you specify that you are going to grow organically)
- Look to see how you can encourage the growth of healthy stuff such as microbes, earthworms, etc. They do a lot to make your soil better.
- Read up about the various fertilizers you can add to your soil to make up for deficiencies. This would mean that you need to find out what your soil is missing, and requires some amount of knowledge (or if you don’t have knowledge, either learn, or get somebody who can advise). Be sure that adding some good compost is typically helpful for the soil.
- Learn about crop rotation, so that you plan ahead for the crops you are going to put in the soil, and learn about which plants add which element, and remove which nutrient from the soil. Doing this is essential if you want to make sure that you soil is good in terms of nutrients, not only now, but for the future.
- Soil is improved when you add organic matter to the soil. This means that you should items such as compost, and even some more strange items such as hair (for nitrogen), grass clippings, purchased organic fertilizer, peat moss
- If you can, enable poultry to have free access to your soil. Hens do a fair amount of the manual hard work required, such as removing weeds, adding manure, and undertaking tilling of the soil.

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What do you mean by Organic Gardening ?
Organic Gardening primarily means not using synthetic products such as fertilizers and pesticides. It means working much more closely with nature, and using natural means to increase the level of ingredients and essential materials such as nitrogen to the soil, and using natural means to counter pests such as insects.
An important part of going organic is that you need to change your style of dealing with problems. In normal gardening, where you do not have to follow organic principles, you can deal with pests once they occur by treating them with pesticide; you can deal with scarcity of nutrients by adding fertilizer. If you are following organic gardening principles, what you really need to do is to try and prevent problems rather than having to deal with them as they occur. Taking the initial steps to make your garden healthier results in having fewer problems to deal with and healthier plants, fewer pest and disease problems.
As a part of this, you need to make sure that your soil is healthy, has all the required nutrients, that you take care to ensure that the plants you are planting are healthy (and you have enough knowledge of the plants you are planting in terms of their requirements and their growth cycles), that you check your plants on a regular basis and have setup a frequency of checking along with a checklist of what to check. It is very important to have a knowledge of the pests in your garden, as not all insects and animals in the garden are harmful (many insects and animals actually help in pest control); further, the damange inflicted by some pests can be minimal and not really affect your plants.
The insistence of not using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is an important part of the growth of an organic garden, and not to be compromized with. It is more of a mind set change that you need to rule out the use of such chemicals. This does not mean that you cannot use pesticides, there are a whole range of pesticides and insect repellants that are based on organic ingredients and which are overall of benefit to the environment (the run-off of pesticides and fertilizers into water systems is now a major environmental and health problem).
Finally, let me round off this summary of organic gardening principles with this definition:

“an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony”

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FLAME WEEDING – This method can be done with a small propane torch, however for larger areas one of the weed flaming torches is an excellent tool. Weed flaming has long been a practice on organic farms in Europe. The point of flaming is not to charbroil the weeds, but heat them just enough that they wilt. This will heat up the cell sap in turn causing them to expand and rupture. Flaming can be used as a spot treatment in lawns. The grass is going to get singed, however it will bounce right back. You may need to flame tough perennial weeds a couple of times to get rid of them. You will have to practice to get the technique down. Keep some water handy when you are flame weeding!

HOREHOUND LEAVES(Marrubium Vulgare) like many varieties in the mint family, the many tiny flowers attract Braconid and Icheumonid wasps, and Tachinidin and Syrid flies. The larval forms of these insects parasitize or otherwise consume many other insects that we consider pests. A hardy plant; it grows where many others fail to thrive it survives all but the harshest winters, and even then will selfseed effectively. Blooms over a long season, attracting beneficial insects almost as long as you are likely to need them. For best results use horehound directly as a companion plant. (Tomatoes are “encouraged” by growing horehound nearby). This applies to peppers and garden variety members of the potato family.

INSECTICIDAL SOAPS are totally bio-degradable and environmentally safe, however, kills beneficial insects as well. The spray penetrates their bodies and causes cell membranes to burst. Spray only those plants exhibiting symptoms. Works as a smothering agent on a wide variety of insects: aphids, mites, white fly, scale, leafhoppers and others. Safe to use up to the day of harvest. Must be sprayed directly on pests for control. Spray the entire plant thoroughly and repeat applications frequently. Soft water produces a sudsier spray that will reach all surfaces of a plant.

LEBIA GRANDIS (Coleoptera: Carabidae) belongs to a large family of beetles containing approximately 40,000 species. Forty-eight species occur in North America. The life history is known for less than 10 of the North American species. The adults are predators and first instar larvae are parasitoids of chrysomelid beetles.

Appearance: Lebia beetles are usually colourful as adults and range in size from 2.5 to 14 mm in length, depending on the species. Head is usually pale (with a reddish tinge) as are mouthparts, antennae, and thorax. Abdomen is mostly black with metallic blue, purple, or sometimes greenish luster to the elytra (wing covers). Legs are entirely pale with a reddish tinge.

Lebia grandis first instar larvae are pale to tan in colouration, heavily sclerotized (hardened), with well developed appendages, mouthparts and antennae, as is typical for carabid larvae. Body length ranges from 3 to 4 mm and width is about 0.5 mm. The second instar larvae undergo a gradual degeneration of appendages, develop a distended body with reduced sclerotization (a simple form of hypermetamorphosis), eventually bearing little resemblance to the first instars.

Pests Attacked: Lebia grandis is an indigenous natural enemy of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata. In fields of cultivated potato, adults are specialist predators of all immature stages of L. decemlineata. However, note that in no-choice feeding trials in the laboratory, L. grandis adults devoured the larvae of the asparagus beetle (Crioceris asparagi). {Neither adults nor larvae of C. asparagi are known to feed on potato plants.} L. grandis larvae are specialist ectoparasitoids of L. decemlineata mature larvae and pupae in the soil.

NEEM when sprayed to foliage often deters leaf-feeding insects (caterpillars). It apparently affects the hormones many insects need to develop, killing them as they attempt to molt or emerge from eggs. Its demonstrated safety to humans (used as toothpaste in India), has recently exempted Neem from food-crop restrictions, by the EPA; thereby enabling manufacturers to market its use on edible or ornamental plants.