A General Introduction to Organic Gardening

Organic gardening, by definition, is the “science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heirloom variety preservation”.  The key to organic gardening is the fact that organic gardeners don’t use chemicals and insecticides to control pests. Organic gardening has been studied for thousands of years and utilizes the most natural processes which generally take more time than chemical approaches. Organic gardening also stresses the point of thinking of your gardening as a whole system that incorporates the soil, water, people, and even the bugs that affect the gardens. Organic gardeners believe that this community approach makes you work with the earth and pay attention to each step of the life cycle. In organic gardening, it is important to choose plants that are going to be able to do well in your locations. Also, you need to choose plants that will not be attacked by a large number of insects that may be in your area.

In this introduction to organic gardening, we will briefly go over the types and history of organic gardening, and the 2 very important topics of pest and weed control.

Types of Organic Gardening
There are several types of organic gardening that we will briefly go over. The first is called a no-till system, which is also called natural farming, which was invented by Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer.
The second kind of organic gardening is called Biodynamic faming which was invented by farmer Rudolf Steiner. Then, there are several types of small gardening techniques called bio-intensive and French intensive methods, and the small plot intensive (or SPIN) method.

Pest Control Approaches
Chemical gardening utilizes insecticides to kill pests and insects and to deter damage to the plants. Typically, organic gardeners try to avoid using chemicals, so they usually try to use other options to keep their gardens safe.
Mainly, organic gardeners simply change their mindsets that some insect damage is ok and the fruits and vegetables may not look absolutely perfect. Besides changing their mindsets to be more accepting of small amounts of pest damage, they also sometimes encourage good insects to live in the gardens that are predatory and can eat the bad insects. They also often choose specific plants which may not attract insects as often. You can also use plant covers to shield your plants during bug season, or use bug traps to limit the insect population.

Weed Control

Hand Picking Weeds
The first way to battle unsightly weeds is the old fashioned way, pulling weeds by hand. If you pinch the base of the weed between your forefinger and thumb, you can quickly rip out weeds. This technique is probably more useful to people with smaller gardens, although it is a fairly simple procedure. If you are impatient though, one of the other techniques may be best for you!

Mulch
If you have a layer of mulch on your garden or flower beds, the weeds are not able to get the light they need to grow. This will smother them from poking through the mulch. The plants are unable to produce chlorophyll, which is a chemical they require to grow. If you can use natural mulch like straw or grass, this is healthier for your soil. You can also use shredded paper, like a newspaper for weed control.

Corn Gluten Meal
You can spread something called corn gluten meal over the area where weeds grow in your garden if you do it very early in the season. This is a product that farmers use to feed cows that can limit the growth of weeds, but if the weeds have already sprouted, this will not help. The corn meal needs to be placed down prior to the weeds sprouting. Corn meal can also kill the flower seeds you have planted though, so it is usually best to use this on flower beds that traditionally re-bloom every year.

Hoeing
You can also simply hoe the garden well using a sharp hoe or an electric one. This will chop the roots from the weed below the soil and chopping them from the root automatically kills the weed.

Organic Gardening is actually quite rewarding. This introduction to organic gardening provides the basics, but for details, you can do more research online as there is a large organic gardening community found there.