Put organic gardening principles to work in your spring vegetable garden to grow lettuce, green peas, and broccoli and its relatives. Eat all you grow with the confidence that comes from an organic harvest - no chemical pesticide residues on your food and no groundwater contamination from chemical fertilizer runoff.
 
  
 
  
1.   Start with organic soil. At the very least, amend your native soil with two inches of organic matter and incorporate a balanced organic fertilizer while tilling. See "eHow to Build Organic Soil" for more details on this very important step. 
 
2.   Be picky in choosing vegetable varieties with resistance to your area's pests. Don't grow what you know will be vulnerable. Investigate heirlooms and hybrids equally for their tough reputations - their strength makes them good candidates for organic gardening. 
 
3.   Plant your vegetables in a diverse pattern to distract insects that pierce, suck and chew leaves and carry diseases to similar plants. Instead of a row of spinach and a row of broccoli for pests to rip through, plant square patterns or groups of each and repeat the pattern to break up the mono-crop bug buffet. 
 
4.   Space each plant so that air circulates around it, and be sure water soaks in and then drains away. These organic strategies help prevent leaf and root diseases. 
 
5.   Keep foiling insects with organic methods. Exclude them with grow covers (woven fabric sheeting that lets air and water through), and encourage beneficial insects by growing a variety of flowers around your vegetables. Use companion planting for the one plant's ability to repel insects from the other - roses with garlic, tomatoes with basil, for example. 
 
6.   Use black plastic mulches to warm the soil in early spring, or let the soil warm naturally with a blanket of organic mulch. This helps prevent the inevitable weeds on unplanted soil. 
 
7.   Fertilize for steady growth that resists pest invaders: organic nitrogen on greens and lettuces, a balanced organic formula on broccoli and its cole crop cousins, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. Water consistently for the same reason. A little fertilizer and water at frequent intervals is better than a rare flush of fertilizer and torrent of water. 
 
8.   Work organic mulch and compost into the soil after each crop and before planting the next, or plant a cover crop or green manure if you won't be planting right away. Constant soil renewal marks a garden as truly organic and insures healthy vegetables every spring.