10 Reasons for Organic Gardening

January 23rd, 2007 | Category: Organic Gardening

I often get people visiting my site who are looking for information on why to buy organic produce or why to garden organically. Melanie from Bean Sprouts has an excellent post on why she prefers to have an organic garden. I’ve added my comments to her points:

It costs money.
Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers are very expensive, especially if you use them on a regular basis. Organic gardening involves a little more physical work than walking around spraying everything but it’s worth it in the end.
Artificial herbicides, pesticides, and fertilisers are made from oil.
I admit I didn’t know that and it never even crossed my mind.
We eat produce from the allotment.
Why would anyone want to use chemicals on food they intend to eat? Commercial growers use chemicals for commercial reasons (which don’t make sense in the long term) but it is never necessary to use chemicals in your own garden. If you find that you are having trouble with one plant or crop being continually attacked by pests then simply grow something else.
But it’s not about what’s easiest, it’s about what’s best.
Organic gardening may take a bit of extra time initially, but once you establish the garden and get into the routine of using natural pest control methods and using organic fertilisers such as worm compost, it is no more difficult than a regular garden.
It’s good exercise.
There’s no doubt about that. You get to use a wide variety of muscles when gardening, just be careful of your back.
Gardening helps with depression.
Sunlight can help reduce depression in some instances. So even if it’s the middle of winter and you don’t feel like going outside, a little bit of gardening and sunlight will do you good.
The soil is alive.
Soil is made up of micro and macro organisms. Pesticides and other chemicals kill these beneficial organisms resulting in poor quality soil. Celsias has a very thorough post on the value of soil.
Organic gardening reduces water pollution.
I would add that the use of pesticides and fertilisers can lead to serious pollution in our waterways which lead to many problems including algal blooms. These are fairly common place these days in many of our rivers and streams and lead to the deaths of thousands of fish.
Toxic chemicals can lead to cancer.
Many toxic chemicals including many pesticides have strong links to cancer. The dangers of these chemicals are evident when you consider the thousands of cotton farm workers who die every year after long term exposure to pesticides. Pesticides which are available to home gardeners have also recently been linked to breast cancer.
Pesticides kill predatory pests.
Pesticides kill pests but then when new pests arrive they won’t have any predators to attack them so you’ll then need to use more pesticides. It’s a vicious circle…