Whether you believe in climate change or not, to go organic in your garden has many things to recommend it.
Leaving climate change aside for a moment, let’s consider some of the ramifications of going organic as a home gardener
- Less cost (no chemical purchases etc)
- Improved taste for fruit and vegetables
- You can re-introduce some of the better tasting heritage vegetables that have gone by the wayside because controlled and forced production has eliminated many of them – which has been done in favour of appearance and saleability, not taste.
- Safer – for people, animals and the earth
The moment you start thinking about going organic, you realise that you cannot separate it from being eco-friendly and so climate change comes into the equation automatically, and that’s good as it is valuing adding to being organic.
So continuing the benefits
- Cleaner environment
- Nature is allowed to play its role
- Natural immune systems of plants and pest controls can be strengthened or renewed.
How do you become organic?
A first step is to simply be eco-friendly – that is put into place practices that will help reduce your carbon footprint from the ‘get go’.
Actually, simply having a garden is being eco-friendly and contributes to reducing carbon in the atmosphere.
But, are you eco-friendly in the way you manage your garden? By using non-organic methods of fertilising and pest and weed control, you reduce the benefits of a garden in relation to carbon reduction.
Organic is Nature
Being organic is not some tree-hugger fanaticism or a hippie dream. It is simply letting nature work at its optimum with less interference from us.
Should our focus of concern be on climate change or on nature being itself? That is, should climate change be the motive for us to go organic in our gardens?
It is not a question that has to be answered really. If there were no issues with the climate and ozone depletion, the reason for going organic remain and should be adopted by all types of gardeners. That is, we need to let nature be fully in control and work within her systems and not ours.
This doesn’t mean we cannot look at genetic modification to feed the world’s starving, cross breeding to improve strength, hybridization for more variation and so on. It is about how we care for the results – in the soil, in water conservation and pest control.
Why be organic?
Obviously, if you are concerned about climate change, this is a step that you can take to make a difference.
Will it change the world? Probably not, but every little step is progress along the right path. The affects on the atmosphere are certainly larger than any individual, but the more individuals commit to what they can control to reducing carbon, then the more pressure can eventually be imposed on the big polluters in industry and mass farming.
Being organic as completely as you can in your garden is a great contribution.
Additionally, as I have mentioned above, it’s time to let nature come back and work her own magic – instead of us restricting it through our intervention with chemicals, soil degradation, salination, wasteful water usage and so on.
Plants in gardens have lost a lot of their natural ability to combat pests because we have made them dependent on chemical aids.
Think of the major issue we face with antibiotics becoming less and less effective due to over prescription. Our bodies have become less susceptible to the benefits of these medications and bugs and viruses are steadily becoming resistant.
Likewise in the plant world. Plants that are dependent on external controls for disease resistance, are more and more losing their ability fight off pests and disease.
Becoming organic in the way we care for our gardens will, in time, help renew our plants ability to use its own immune system to fight off whatever decides to attack them.
Of course, this will not happen overnight when we stop using chemicals, and we have to expect some losses. However, with time and patience, with gradual reduction of chemical dependency and introduction of natural or organic controls, our plants will become stronger and survive more and more.
Too many of our plants have become like finely tuned thoroughbred racehorses. What we need are horses that are strong and not so over-bred that they succumb easily to problems.
