A healthy soil food web produces lush vegetable plants. Photo credit: Southern Foodways Alliance
It was just a few short years ago that organic gardeners and growers were looked upon as freaks of nature in the gardening world. Miracle-Gro, Roundup and Peters were the norm on the shelves of garden sheds in most places. Now, those products are kept out of sight and usually shunned at the garden center. Organic is the new mantra for the 2010 gardening season as Annie Spiegelman writes on Huffington Post,
More and more home gardeners are interested in growing their own food this year. Plant nurseries and seed companies are already showing sales of vegetable seedlings and fruit trees on the rise this spring. For the most part, this is fantastic news. Bring me more garden geeks! But here’s my dilemma. Are home gardeners going to be hoodwinked into buying more chemicals to feed their crops and contaminate their entire zip codes or will they smarten up and go organic?
Garden tip of the day: If you’re going to grow food in your backyard, you must grow it organically. This means without synthetic fertilizers and chemicals pesticides. If you’re not going to grow your food organically, I’d rather you choose a different hobby. Try knitting or name-dropping. Or, how about Hacky Sack?
As a master gardener, garden author, dirt diva, mom and a relentlessly annoyed ex-New Yorker, I’m telling it to you straight up. If you’re not going organic in your backyard, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. And, that’s lame. Gardening with chemicals is so 1960’s. That should have gone out with Beatle boots and bell-bottoms! It’s not your fault, really. Chemical companies have huge marketing budgets purposely driven to brainwash you while us organic gardeners, well . . . all we’ve got are earthworms, aged horse manure and a rickety old compost tumbler.
Fire it up!
Click to read the rest of the In A Few Short Years, Organic Has Become The Norm story.
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