Lamium is a short, rapid growing plant in the mint family. Also referred to as spotted deadnettle, lamium will grow in shady locations that do not commonly support other plant life. Members of the Lamium that are grown in the garden are usually done so for their beautiful foliage. The Lamium genus are hardy perennials and contains many members most of which are weeds.

Characteristics of Dead Nettle (Lamium)

- Nettle is a well behaved ground cover and is not considered a serious garden thug.
- It is easily edged in the spring and is not likely to become a weed.
- Dead nettles are ground cover perennials with leaves that are marked in silver. The flowers – yellow or pink – appear next to the leaves.
- It flowers in late spring or early summer.
- This is one hardy plant, surviving nicely down into USDA zone 2.
- Dead Nettles are deer resistant. A good plant to use for naturalizing, massing or as a ground cover.

Planting Conditions for Dead Nettle (Lamium)

- Very hot conditions can lighten up the colouring so this plant is best considered a part-shade or shade groundcover in a decent soil.
- Try planting under shrubs to brighten up unused garden spaces.
- Place the plants no deeper than they were growing in the containers.
- Set the plants 9 to 12 inches apart.
- Water well until soil is completely moist.
- Control the spread in the spring with a sharp shovel to edge it.
- Easily propagated by division in the spring or by tip cuttings.

Caring for Dead Nettle

- They should be fertilized in the spring.
- Once the flowering season is over they should be cut back.
- Shear this plant after the first bloom to promote compact growth.
- Apply a light application of organic fertilizer on top of the soil in early spring.
- Water well.

Organic insecticides are a prime need for those who are into organic farming. In organic farming, you depend on your farming methods to ensure that your plants do not have pests, but even when there are pests, you can learn to ignore some of them as long as they are not enough to cause damage to your plants. However, when you reach a stage whereby you need to get rid of your pests, you need to use organic insecticides to get rid of these pests.
Organic insecticides are thought to be environmentally sound, causing no harm to the earth, humans, or animals. They often consist of such things as fatty acids and plant oils. Natural pesticides act upon pests either through contact, or through absorption by the pests of these chemicals. The advantage of using organic pesticides is more of a reverse strategy, whereby you consider that artificial pesticides can use harmful chemicals (DDT anyone?), with a lot of residue left behind that affects other insects and pollutes through run-offs into rivers and streams.
However, you should keep in mind that using pesticides is part of an overall pest avoidance strategy that employs the usage of traps, and naturally occurring insects / other animals which counter the pests. This is also because artificial insecticides are more powerful than organic ones, and you need to compensate with a more comprehensive pest avoidance strategy. You need to ensure that you are following all these tactics before you start considering the use of pesticides (even organic pesticides). Further, just because an insecticide is organic does not mean that it is totally harmless; you should make sure that you are using the insecticide in the quantities and in the mechanism as directed. Also, be careful about the exact insecticide you are using.
Read this article for how to buy organic insecticides (link).

If you are into organic farming (or if you are following organic principles for your kitchen garden), then it is very important for you to know all about organic insecticides. One of the problems quote in traditional ways of farming is the use of chemical / synthetic pesticides that leave residues that make their way into animals and humans, and also end up polluting the soil and water. So, what is an organic insecticide ? It is a substance made from natural ingredients that is used for repelling insects and pests; you still need to repel pests and insects even if you go organic.
Organic insecticides are also specialized, in the sense that certain insecticides work on different insects / pests, and you need to do the necessary research to ensure that you have identified the pest you need to get rid of, and what insecticide you need to use. Before making that decision though, ensure that you have actually reviewed that you do have an insecticide or pest problem. Just because an insect is eating away the leaves from your plant does not mean that the plant or the produce is getting harmed (plants can take a loss of upto 25-33% of their leaf cover before their growth is harmed).
Further, ensure that you have also checked out that there are no natural predators that you can use; for example, certain bugs eat insects or pests as a part of nature, and using that solution might work out better. However once you have decided that you have a pest problem that cannot be solved by any other means, then you need to use an organic insecticide.

Ad: Click Here to learn how to double your tomato harvest!

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals

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.

Ad: Manual For Creating & Managing Your Own Organic Food Garden, Click here