What is Organic Gardening?

Organic gardening can be best described in one word. Natural. Non-organic, conventional gardening uses water soluble salt based fertilizers, HARMFUL TOXIC pesticides and herbicides and also uses practices which destroy living organisms in the soil that your plants need to achieve their potential.

Organic gardening is a system of methods that keep the harmony and balance in the plant and animal kingdoms. When ecosystems are left to thrive on their own, great things happen and your plants will be healthier than ever. And so will you.

Organic gardening is not what most people think. It's not about hippy treehugger "save the earth" this-and-that. It's not about being an environmental wacko - "chaining yourself to a tree to stop the bulldozer". It's not about yuppie bottled water drinking, tofu eating, hybrid car driving "I do this because it reduces my carbon footprint" nonsense.
It's about cutting edge science, facts acquired through scientific experiments and trials. It's about several fields of science including biology, microbiology, botany, chemistry and geology (among others) coming together sharing scientific discoveries. It's more complicated than rocket science but simple enough for a child to understand. It's about growing safe, healthy vegetables in a way that is beneficial to the other plants, animals & insects in the ecosystem that you have created. Organic gardening retains the natural balance & diversity of life that you find in undisturbed areas.

Instead of destroying soil microbes and soil structure by rototilling, you will feed the microbes and enhance the soil structure, improving it and making the soil more fertile each year - naturally. Instead of killing earthworms by drying them up with your soluble salt based fertilizers, you will feed them and encourage them to move in, so that they add organic fertilizer with their castings and aerate the soil by moving through it.

When I read about or hear people talking about applying Sevin pesticide to their crops I cringe. Sevin contains a chemical known as Carbaryl (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) which is illegal in the UK, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Angola because it is known to cause cancer. It kills everything including beneficial insects like honeybees and ladybugs. GOD only knows what damage it can cause to human beings, children especially since they are growing fast and the cells in their organs are dividing rapidly. Yet, people are oblivious and just spray it all over everything just so that they can have a bug free garden.
What they aren't understanding is that plants bioaccumulate toxins in their tissues and fruits ~ which you then consume, ingesting harsh chemicals which your body has to deal with. I don't have kids, but if I did, I wouldn't feel like I was doing a good job if I knew there was even the slightest chance that they could be eating something that would harm them in any way. (guilt trip)

There are so many topics to cover. I admit, it is quite difficult to know where to begin. I will do my best and just keep adding stuff to the pile with the hope that somebody will get some use out of it. At a minimum, this blog will serve as my own set of notes so that when I am old and can't remember anything, I can teleport to my friend Mike (who will by then live on Mars) and he can show me how to access the thing they used to call "the internet" so I can check the results of the experiment that I conducted on pepper plant spacing way back when.

So, I leave you with a very rough introduction of what organic gardening is - or for now at least a general idea of why one may want to start gardening naturally. I know that you may be asking yourself "SO how do I do it? I want to get started!" If this is not going fast enough for you, I would suggest that you search the web for information or even better buy the book "The Vegetable Gardeners Bible" by Edward C. Smith (a really great book! - which I am in no way affiliated with!). You can get it from amazon.com, most likely with free shipping.

In the beginning...

GOD created the earth!

Welcome to "The Joy of Dirt ~ Do-It-Yourself Organic Gardening"! My goal is to share knowledge about organic gardening with anybody out there that is willing to read about it. I have an extensive library of books, years of experience with gardening in general and an immense obsession with playing in the dirt. I'm looking forward to writing all about it.
Right now my schedule is very tight, filled with a full time job, part time evening & weekend college classes, a girlfriend and of course SPRING - which means that the garden is requiring a lot of my time, too. As soon as things start to settle down, I will be posting frequently - so check back soon and we'll get started.