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I'm never alone in my garden. Backing me up day in, day out is an entourage of supporters - most with six legs, some with hundreds, some too small to have legs at all - keeping soil excited and pests quiet. Crowds of them cheer on my lettuce and dahlias.

But these horticultural helpers didn't arrive all at once, following some organic flag. I became organic by accident, following best practice ideas from broader experience.

Compost heaps offered early support, adding gorgeous organic matter to release embedded nutrients and break up clay lumps for better drainage (or hold everything together in freer draining soils). Compost is like an alarm clock to wake up both soil biology and the millions of creatures which live unseen in our veg beds.

My plants were far more enthusiastic with lively soil structure and fertility. It was like giving them three square meals a day - rather than double espresso for breakfast. This is best practice for trees, shrubs, lovely herbaceous crops and annuals.

Choosing the right site with the right soil became my next organic step. A satisfying mix to offer every plant natural vigour and better resilience to pest and diseases.

Imagine a sturdy growing carrot in sandy, free-draining soil with just the right amount of organic matter, enough to hold on to water yet not so much that they're starting to fork: that's a plant provided with a horticultural bat to fend off antagonists. Moisture-loving willow trees planted in the same dry-ish, sandy soil, though, will sulk and suffer. Knowing what plants like best saves the effort of forcing growth with extra fertilisers, sprays, and water.

Inviting wildlife to sort out ambitious pests was the next organic milestone for me. Frogs enjoy slugs. Birds hunt caterpillars. And the larvae of hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds enjoy aphids and their lookalikes. These mini-armies of gardeners joined the entourage to reduce pest populations to a murmur, albeit never quite silent. Predators always leave some prey, so expect a bit of damage.

Politely 'borrowing' wildlife avoids the bother and residues of spraying. I enjoy watching them visit and hoping their offspring will set up home. Real estate includes simple flowers, long grass, hedgerows, ground cover, berries, old stems for hibernation and shallow water. Features are tidily ordered in a (sort of) corridor so the medley can wander around my patch, and the neighbour's.

Phil's plastic bottle cloches

And eventually, I became organic by attitude. Firstly, leaping over cabbage to investigate dodgy looking leaves, reacting quickly to pests and diseases before they spread. Then learning to whip off in spring, yet leave powdery mildew on end-of-season courgettes. Then opting for least environmental impact when buying, such as wood from . Or using recycled plastic bottle cloches and durable pest-barrier meshes.

Rather than feel pressured by organic expectations, I've come to think of my 'conversion' to organic methods as a journey. My benches come from reclamation yards - though I love the smell of new sawn timber. I've given in and use extra fertiliser to keep my childhood oak tree growing in a container, though for less sentimental growing I use varieties that reduce tricky problems such as Lettuce 'Amorina', which is resistant to mildew.

National charity Garden Organic has to help you make such choices too. They use smiley faces of increasing happiness: wide grins for compost, but sad faces for sprays - although there are chemicals which save crops and still fit into an organic regime such as ferric phosphate slug pellets. And you can lend a helping hand by adding your own wildlife, such as , a parasitic wasp that controls greenhouse whitefly. With simple steps and enough support, organic growing has something to offer every garden.

Philip Turvil is a horticultural adviser for and also runs their programme.