Organic Gardening Reduces Environmental Impact

May 3 2012

Organic gardening means growing your plants without using synthetic products like fertilizers or pesticides. It is an intelligent way to fortify depleted soil, control pests, and make the best use of natural resources without damaging our ecosystem. For instance, by planting legumes, you are naturally adding nitrogen. When you grow plants that work along with nature, then the whole process eventually thrives well with our environment. As you feed the soil naturally using organic matter like garden waste, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, dried leaves, the soil will in turn feed the plants.

Organic gardening has become popular due to raising environmental concerns. In the name of having pest-free garden, if we dump chemicals into the soil, we are eventually polluting our environment, which not only triggers a series of health problems for all living beings but also adversely affects our ecosystem. This is a major concern as the earth we live in has limited resources and the growing population is putting tremendous pressure on it.

Organic gardening not only helps to keep our environment clean and safe, it also helps us to utilize natural resources efficiently with better plant-growing methods. If we wish to damage our environment carelessly for the sake of efficiency, then we will be soon creating permanent damage to our environment. When you use pesticides and other chemicals, not only does the produce gradually decline over time, pests become resistant to such methods and this leads to trying even more harmful methods to control pests and improve productivity. With organic gardening, you get far better yield as you are trying to repair and restore the imbalanced ecosystem.

If you are starting organic gardening, here are some methods you could consider to increase the produce by efficiently utilizing natural resources.

Mulch is usually placed over the soil to retain moisture, provide nutrients, and suppress weed growth. Therefore, it is essential to create mulch using the right organic materials. Organic mulches can be prepared using leaves from deciduous trees, grass clippings, wood chips, and bark chips. If you prepare mulch using straw, sawdust, or peat, then the bacteria and fungi present in it could remove nitrogen from soil and could negatively affect soil and plant growth.

Additionally, heavy organic mulches could block the airflow between soil and atmosphere. Preparing an organic mulch doesn’t mean you can use any organic material, as wrong ones could wick out moisture from soil or could lead to improper nitrogen ratio in the soil. You also ought to beware of adding animal manures for soil amendments, as insufficiently processed animal manures could contaminate plants with E-coli bacteria. The best way is to examine the items you use for preparing organic manure thoroughly on a case-by-case basis. Once you are aware of the nature of each material you use to prepare organic manure, you can easily make effective decisions and increase the yield drastically. You can also consider having a compost pit to provide you with regular supply of organic manure.

Rainwater is usually less polluted and is one of the best gifts from nature. When it comes to watering your plants, the best way is to collect rainwater by channelizing it into collection tanks. You can also dig small pits beside plants to collect rainwater, this way you would be naturally enhancing the moisture of soil. Moreover, whenever you clean your garden, shove all the fallen leaves onto the plant bed itself, as this could act as organic mulch for the plant.

By growing organic plants, we are increasing our food safety with no hormonal contamination, chemical contamination or transgenic contamination. Transgenic contamination is one of the major concerns nowadays as most of the plants are genetically modified in some way or the other. Organic gardening doesn’t include genetically modified varieties and are safer to use. Nature has presented us with healthy plants with each plant having its own genetic code like we humans have.

A genetic code is what makes a plant unique, like how much water to absorb, how much nutrients to retain, how to balance with ecosystem. Therefore, when we alter the genetic code of a plant, in the name of improving its yield or appearance, we are almost altering the way a plant grows and thrives in the environment. Moreover, consuming genetically modified plants could have detrimental effects on living beings too.

Modern practices impose a large threat on environment due to heavy use of fertilizers which eventually makes soil infertile. In the contrast, organic gardening is self-sufficient with integrated pest management. This approach improves sustainability for long time as organic gardening fortifies soil naturally and makes it fertile, allowing you to manage plants efficiently even during drought.

About the author: Margaret is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on automotto and diyhealth. Beside this she is fond of books. She recently did an article on Nicki Minaj. These days she is busy in writing an article on Alto.

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