What is Organic Gardening?

Have you ever heard of organic gardening? It might sound silly for there to be something called organic gardening when gardening is the act of raising organic plants. What the ‘organic’ part of organic gardening is referring to is the products and materials you use while you garden. 

When you go the route of organic gardening, you can only use certain kinds of mulch, pesticides, compost, and more. It does limit your options, but it can produce some of the best results. You can truly know what the purest of fruit and vegetables taste like. 

Benefits of Organic Gardening

As stated, the plants you grow are purer, but what does this mean? For fruits and vegetables, you may find that they are more potent in vitamins and minerals. You get healthier ingredients, which leads to healthier food options. When you don’t have pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide residue on your plants, they can only produce better fruits and vegetables. You can receive similar results when you grow herbs. If you’re growing flowers, then they stand to last longer than one season.

But the land you're growing on experiences some benefits as well. There is less topsoil and toxic runoff. Many pesticides and artificial fertilizers can displace topsoil more than organic ones. This can lead to it being taken away during rainfall, causing toxic runoff. Toxic runoff can commonly lead to water pollution and the spread of soil poisoning. 

Allowing toxic runoff can also lead to the deaths of insects, birds, and other beneficial soil organisms that can get caught up in the fight against weeds and pests.

What Can You Use in Organic Gardening?

Believe it or not, you can purchase organic fertilizers that lack the toxic residue that leads to things like water pollution and soil poisoning. Items like compost, topsoil, and more are made from an assortment of different materials including:

• Grass clippings
• Shredded leaves
• Plant waste
• Animal manure
• Rock phosphate
• Seaweed
• Wood ash

Drawbacks of Organic Gardening

One of the first issues with organic gardening is that organic materials offer little protection from pests. To keep your garden safe, you’ll have to do a lot of manual work. This will include picking out insect eggs, removing infected plants, pulling out weeds, and seasonally rotating crops more than you normally would. 

Non-organic materials remove a lot of the tedious work out of gardening so you can enjoy the more enjoyable parts. Some people enjoy this aspect of gardening. It lets them feel more accomplished, but not everyone. 

Non-organic materials are also good at boosting weak plants and making them strong. This means you have to be on top of your plants more than you normally would to make sure they’re properly watered and receiving the right amount of sunlight.

What Can’t You Use in Organic Gardening?

Artificial materials are easier to come by. They’re produced en masse with non-organic materials that optimize their ability to do their job very well. Because of the side effects they can have on the environment if not used properly – side effects purely organic materials don’t have – they aren’t used in organic gardening.  

This means you can’t use the majority of agricultural chemicals, like pesticides, fungicides, and weedkillers, to protect your garden from invaders. This leaves the impetus on you to protect them, as stated. The same goes for artificial fertilizers that work to reenergize your soil after it’s been pumped with other chemicals, to alleviate any side effects and improve the overall quality.

Ultimately, this leaves you with few options for protecting your garden outside of doing everything by hand.

Contact Pioneer Landscape Centers For Any of Your Gardening Materials

Whether you want to go down the classical gardening route, use the best materials to focus on the fun of gardening, or try your hand at organic gardening for a challenge, we have what you need. You can trust our experts to point you in the right direction so you can find all of your landscaping news. For more information, contact your local Pioneer Landscape Center today.