What is Organic Gardening, Really?
April 1st, 2009
Filed in Organic Book Reviews
Tags: gardening, Seasonal Garden Maintenance
Today, we debuted our new organic gardening ebook. This is a very exciting development in the evolution of goorganicgardening.com! I feel like we have a great product to offer new gardeners, or experienced gardeners that are used to gardening conventionally, with lots of synthetic inputs. I really think that you can go from zero to competent in one season if you follow the information in this ebook. I didn’t say expert. I’ve been gardening for 27 years, but I’m definitely not an expert. I learn new things about gardening every day. But, if you have been watching the news, are concerned about feeding your family, and have decided to plant a garden this year, you can get a pretty good start with some packets of seeds and this ebook.
What is Organic Gardening?
The other day, while talking to Chris about a gardening questions from someone, I started spouting off re: my views about what organic gardening really is. Yes, you can buy stuff at the grocery with the label “organic” on it. That stuff was grown according to rigid FDA guidelines. Does that mean anything, really? I don’t think so. Just because you follow a bunch of rules set by a government agency does not mean you are really helping the environment. Just because you can read a list of prohibited substances does not mean you are sustainable in your agricultural methods. The organic label is available only for FDA inspected producers. However, any home gardener can be an organic gardener-label or no label. Being an organic gardener is more of a state of mind than a set of rules.
Harmony and Balance in the System
What happens when you get a cold? Your system gets “out of whack.” How about when you eat too much spicy food? Your stomach revolts. If you keep your child up too late? He gets cranky. Gardens and yards are the same. In regular, wild, uncultivated settings, ecosystems (communities of plants, animals and organisms) reach an equilibrium. If something happens to disrupt the equilibrium, the system eventually rights itself.
Gardening, and yard maintenance is a major disruption of equilibrium of the natural ecosystem. Monocultures wreak havoc with the system, whether they are organically farmed or not. Organic gardening is much more about a holistic approach, and an eye toward letting the system balance itself, as much as possible. No, it isn’t natural for radishes and tomatoes to be growing right next to each other. They don’t come from the same place. However, a garden of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, chives, sage and marigolds growing together, interspersed with each other is a much closer approximation of a healthy forest community with lots of different species living together, than is a field of corn.
The principles of organic gardening are to maintain the system-not the plant. Don’t solve individual problems, keep the entire system functioning. Build the soil, encourage beneficial insects, plant things together that help each other. Whenever I have a problem in my yard or garden, first I try to see what is going wrong in the overall system, and restore order. Sometimes, I just ignore the problem and work itself out. (Pest populations will escalate and crash, eventually, if left alone.)
Eat According to the Season
When you take care of your own garden, you determine your threshold for damage tolerance. You decide if eating zucchini every day for a month is enough, and let the vines die when a squash borer moves in, and move on to eating tomatoes every day for a month. You have more flexibility to operate according to your own wishes, and live by the season, not the whims of shareholders or the public used to eating strawberries in December.
The shift from families growing most of their own food, or at least a lot of their own produce to buying it all at the grocery happened in only the last 40-50 years or so. A recent conversation with my grandma and mom remembered the large vegetable and fruit gardens the Inmans had to feed their large family. By the time I was old enough to remember, the “Inman Orchard” was a bunch of wormy trees and some swing sets. The orchard used to have pigs running around in it, and included row upon row of fresh produce. Ideally, more people will begin growing more of their own food, which will reduce pollution, grocery bills, and dependence on oil.
That might not happen for a while. I’m encouraged, though, by the interest in vegetable gardening this year-sparked by the recession, blogged about by my fellow gardeners, and encouraged with the first vegetable garden at the White House in years. We’re getting closer to returning to our roots.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Do you think this trend will end along with the recession? I wonder about this …
April 1st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I sure hope not! I am hoping that people will get hooked once they start growing their own, and will keep it up! We’ll see, I guess.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:59 am
Unfortunately fads come and fads go, but I hope the same as you Katie, that at least some people will realize how much fun it is to grow your own veggies and how much tastier they are too!
October 10th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Hey this was a wonderful read for someone who has just got into gardening and want to go the organic way! Our first plant was infested with some pests and we were inclined to get rid of it(as is advised by the conventional wisdom), but we kept it and the plants surprised us with some ladies’ fingers! The holistic point surely strikes a chord – thank you so much in sharing your thoughts on organic way of gardening!