Organic Gardening - The Healthy Alternative

Organic gardening is a gardening technique wherein no artificial fertilizers are used for plant-propagation. Only natural nutrients are used. Modern gardening today, often incorporates a rich amount of ‘other-than-natural’ fertilizers, nutriments, pesticides, synthetics, chemicals etc. While these products do serve their purpose fostering plant growth, if they are eaten, they can prove to be harmful and unhygienic to human health. This is where organic gardening comes into play as it does not employ any chemicals.

Evolution

Prof. J. I. Rodale is known to have introduced the concept of organic gardening. With the publication of his magazine ‘Organic Farming and Gardening’ by Rodale Press in the 1950s, the subject got attention and acceptance, and the book still is the most widely-read gardening magazine worldwide. It is now titled ‘Organic Gardening’.

Organic Gardening – Emphasis

# Soil Fertility: Organic gardening follows the concept of ‘feeding the soil to feed the plants’. But this feeding in turn, is only from local natural sources, such as green manures, minerals, humus, companion plants etc. Minerals are obtained from different sources – calcium from fossils, potassium from wood-ash, nitrogen from animal-dung, phosphorus from bones etc. Humus contains cellulose that behaves like a sponge and holds moisture in the soil. Humus is produced by ‘composting’, which is a process of leaving grass clippings, food wastages and leaves etc. to be consumed by bacteria, fungi, earthworms and insects, such that only cellulose and minerals of the original vegetable remains.

# Pest-Control: Use of pesticides as a perst-control measure is avoided in organic gardening. Methods of crop rotation, physical removal of insects, introduction of prey species, inter-planting, companion planting etc. are encouraged. For example, fruits like pumpkin and squash can be placed on a bed of sand; snails and slugs dislike sand and usually wouldn’t mount it, hence the plants stay safe without using snail-poisons. Acquiring natural insect enemies such as ladybugs for aphids and preying mantis also helps. Natural insecticides and deterrents such as garlic or soap sprays can be used to keep insects away.

# Weed-Management: Use of herbicides is avoided in organic gardening. The weeds are removed manually or by using barriers. Say for an example, barriers can be put at proper places so as to to prevent weeds from reaching sun-light, which is vital for their growth. These barriers could be stones, leaf litters, straws, woods, papers etc., and are called ‘mulches’. Another method is the use of special tilling devices and cultivators to suppress weeds by mechanically disturbing their roots and preventing them from absorbing water or nutrients.

# Conserve & Recycle: Natural materials like manure, animal excrements, composted weeds, kitchen scraps etc. can be conserved and recycled to provide natural fertilizers.

Why Organic Gardening?

# An obvious benefit of organic gardening is to grow fruits and vegetables with nearly no traces of chemicals. Organic food proves to be healthier to eat.

# In organic gardening, artificial fertilizers are superseded by natural nourishing elements only. These natural elements are available just naturally, and are ‘free resources’. This leads to notable savings in gardening, while your purchased chemicals would have been very expensive .

# Not from the persepective of individual health, but organic gardening also fulfills one’s social environmental responsibility. The use of natural substances reduces the risk of environmental problems.

Organic Gardening - The Healthy Alternative

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