Organic and Sustainable Products

Organic growing is different from using chemicals for several important reasons.  First, we need to have most of the nutrients present in the soil in non-leachable forms most of the time.  There must be mechanisms in the soil capable of converting not-available-to-plant nutrients into plant-available nutrients in the root zone. The mechanisms to do this conversion process are beneficial microbes — bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and microarthropods.  The beneficial species of these organisms are naturally found in healthy growing systems, not the disease species.

Beneficial bacteria and fungi are needed first to degrade any residual toxic chemicals in your growing environment.  Then bacteria and fungi are needed to tie-up nutrients so those nutrients are not leachable, and thus are not lost when water moves through the soil.  Finally, bacteria and fungi need to be eaten by protozoa and nematodes to release tied-up nutrients into a plant available form.  If any of the species that do this processing in the are missing, then life is missing in the soil. The focus then need to be to reestablish the live and productive soil that exists when soils is first planted. The goal is to create the soil biology that exists in any green field.

Providing nutrients and a large and diverse set of microbes will transform nutrients into a form that plants can uptake. The result is simple, plants naturally thrive. Microbes help hold on to nutrients so they no longer leach from the soil, reducing the need for larger amounts of nutrients. Microbes also restructure the soil by creating air passageways and cavities that enable water and air to be retained within the soil, so considerably less water can be utilized. The result, less money, time, and energy is expended and the health of the plants improve. Plants contain more nutrients and have built up their immune systems to become resistant to problem pests and diseases, leading to higher yields and plants that grow bigger and faster.

Complications remain as nothing is grown in isolation – freezing weather, scorching heat, chlorine, chloramine and high salinity in our watering systems, pesticide drift, etc.  However, maintaining a healthy population of beneficial microbes in soils and on plant surfaces will nurture a protective type of environment that will help thwart any disease-causing organisms simply by outcompeting them for food and space.

Man must regard nature as one unit, a whole and everything that occurs in nature works together as knots in a net – Diseases of plants are Diseases of the soil. We must treat the prime origin of the disease, not the symptom. It is important to understand that if the soil is living and healthy, the plants will be strong and healthy with natural resistance against disease. This opinion is the basic pillar of organic biological farming.