The bad news is that if you want to create a luxurious, life-enhancing organic garden, and you don't have "garden soil" -rich, crumbly, sweet-smelling loam filled with humus and beneficial creatures -you're going to have to put a little effort into it.

But the good news is that the effort can be minimal and your problems temporary. Just improve your soil. There's a sure-fire way. It's guaranteed and it's free. And if you start now, your garden will be on its way, ready for spring flowers, summer vegetables and autumn berries.

Most organic gardeners will tell you that they don't feed their plants, but they do feed their soil. For soil is alive. Even the poorest soil is seething with billions of micro-organisms, over 99 percent of which are beneficial.

The rule is the greater variety of soil life, the more fertile the soil. The point is to nourish that life. You nourish the life in the soil with the addition of organic matter.

Food for the Soil

When worked into or - even easier - spread on top of the soil, the organic matter provides food for the beneficial earthworms, insects, beetles, bacteria and fungi.

In turn, these micro- and macro-organisms, by just living there, cultivate and build up the fertility of the soil, while controlling pests and diseases. They eat, absorb, conserve, transform and then gradually release soluble nutrients into the soil, making these nutrients available to your plant roots.

If you don't let the soil organisms improve the soil and you want a flourishing flower and vegetable garden, you burden yourself with the tedious and difficult jobs that these organisms do simply by instinct. You'll have to pay.

And I'm not talking only money. You'll pay in time and energy as well. Trust me, soil organisms are much better equipped to handle the fieldwork. That's what they're here on earth for. It's part of their very nature. They cultivate the soil because their very nature depends on it.

The question is where do you get this organic material to feed the life in your soil? Where does it come from? Easy. It's all around you. It's anything that once was alive and that can break down rapidly. You can create it yourself. It's called compost.

Composting is neither perplexing nor very time consuming. You don't need a degree in agronomy. You don't even have to be very exact or follow strict rules, since organic material will break down whatever you do. It just may take longer.

A compost pile takes a little preparation, but once started, it will eventually be both energy saving and cost-effective. You can view it as another method to recycle items that would otherwise end up in the landfills...