Organic vs. Conventional Gardening

These
days you see a lot about “Green” in the media-and what could be
more green than gardening? Gardening is the epitome of “green”
right?

Well,
yes and no-it depends on how you do it. When it comes to gardening
there are two main camps-Conventional and Organic.

Conventional
gardening utilizes chemical fertilizers to promote growth, and
chemical pesticides to control pests. This is the way most of the
produce you see on your grocery store shelves is grown.

Organic
gardening might sound like the “new in-thing” but really it is a very "old thing".  Organic gardening is
simply growing things in the way people have for centuries.
Chemical fertilizers and pesticides were only introduced on a large
scale in the 1940s, before that all gardening-and all food for that
matter-was what we would call “Organic” today. So “Conventional”
has only been the convention for about 70 years.

When you garden organically, you only use naturally occurring materials. Organic gardeners concentrate on increasing the health (fertility) of their
soil. They do this by introducing organic matter (such as compost or
manure) that improves the texture and water retention ability of the soil, and slowly releases its
nutrients to the plant life.

Well,
that sounds great! So why doesn't everyone do Organic gardening?

Because
quite frankly, Organic gardening can be more work. In Conventional
gardening if your crops are looking measly you can easily add
nutrients by throwing on a couple bags of fertilizer–getting almost
instant results. Have pests invading your crops? Regardless of what
it is you can spray it down with some pesticide and be done with it.

Organic
gardening on the other hand takes time. Answers to your problems are
not necessarily a quick fix. It takes time for the organic matter you
add to your soil to show a positive effect. Pest control takes
thought-you have to identify the pest and come up with the best
solution on how to deal with it.

To deal with pests Organic gardeners
may try encourage natural predators that keep down the population of
“bad” insects-for example attracting ladybugs to eat aphids or
growing plants that attract “good” predators. They might utilize
plants that are known (or though) to discourage pests-like mint,
basil or marigolds. Traps, such as saucers of beer set out to trap
slugs, might be set out, or pests could actually be hand picked off
the plants and drowned in a bucket of soapy water. As a last resort
organic gardeners may resort to organic pesticides such as Pyrethrum,
Rotenone, Neem or insecticidal soaps.

Doesn't that
seem like a lot of work?  So why do Organic gardeners bother? Isn't modern science there to
improve our lives?

Proponents
of Organic gardening (and organic food) are concerned about the use
of chemicals on food crops. There are residual pesticides left on
many edibles, and many feel that those chemicals can be absorbed into
the plant. Organic gardeners also look at the ecosystem as a whole,
and how using synthetics can effect the rest of the land-such as
fertilizer run off causing algae blooms in waterways, or pesticides
leaking into groundwater.

Personally
I would rather err on the side of caution.

My
vegetable garden is as organic as I can reasonably make it. For example I try to
use organic seed when possible from mail order sources (love Seed
Savers Exchange) but I do use plants purchased at my local big box store for
tomatoes and peppers due to our short season. I am sure that those
plant starts have been sprayed and fertilized prior to my
purchase-but that's a risk I'm willing to take in order to actually get fruit before the frosts hit.

I
use organic fish fertilizer for the vegetable garden rather than
“Miracle Grow”, but I am using up the rest of a bag of normal (ie conventional)
time release fertilizer that I purchased prior to discovering organic
gardening in the flower boxes only.  When that bag is gone I won't purchase
any more.

I
have a compost pile, but I supplement that with compost purchased
from a local dairy farm. They are a conventional, not organic, dairy
farm so I'm sure there are things in the manure that do not adhere
to the guideline for being organic.   

I
read, I think, then I act in the best way I can taking both the
information and my own personal situation into account. That's all
any of us can do.

Interested in reading more about Organic Gardening?  Try these resources:

Organic Gardening Magazine Online

Organic Gardening Forum on GardenWeb

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening

The Truth About Organic Gardening by Jeff Gillman

Happy Gardening!

Jenn is the Blissfully Domestic Gardening Diva and lives in Zone 5 (or Upstate New York for those of you just learning to speak "gardening").  A full time, stay at home mom
to Princess and Buddy, loving wife to Yankee Bill, professional frugalite and aspiring gardener.  You can see Jenn
wearing her other hat and blogging about living large on a little bit
at Frugal Upstate-a guide to Concious Spending.

 

Resources
:LSU Pub 2948a Organic Gardening   

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Gardening.