Organic Gardeners – Are you one?
Gardeners can sometimes claim to be ‘organic’, but if you delve into their gardening habitats, you may discover that they still use pesticides on their lawns, or kill weeds with the help of herbicides.
To claim to be an organic gardener, you ought to be 100% organic in all of your garden habits. You do not ever use any of those inexpensive fungicides and pesticides in order to help with your weeding, or to eradicate annoying pests. The garden should be left to mature along with nature, and control over growth should be manual, and properly planned in advance, so that unwanted plants are kept to a minimum. You cannot be selectively organic! You can of course be ‘more’ organiic, but don’t brag about it until you avoid all pesticides and fungicides!
One good habit to start is to grow your own compost, as this is a great way to be certain of the make-up of the fertiliser you are using. Have one compost section to collect grass cuttings, and leaves, and all other ‘uncooked’ waste. Then invest in a worm factory to compost cooked waste, which produces great nutrition for your plants.
For years in time gone by gardeners felt that nature had to be tamed, in order to allow the desired plants to flourish. We had no such concept as ‘organic gardening’. While some gardeners may well have worked with nature developing their areas, it was not necessarily the standard practice.
You may just want to grow herbs indoors, but do try to be mostly organic – you will be rewarded with healthy, chemical-free garden produce.
Don’t waste all your money on buying insecticides, buy new plants instead. While I may not be expert in all facets of gardening, I do know what I want, and I do have a good idea of what constitutes building a successful ‘organic’ garden. An organic garden is a ‘healthy’ garden, nurtured in a timely fashion, with no unnatural shortcuts allowed!
Colin West is a full-time garden enthusiast. He has been gardening all of his life, and has recently completed a new ebook on how to Grow Your Own Herb Garden – which is available as a download.
