Organic Gardening- What is it? Why do it?

In its most basic form, organic gardening is the growth of the various forms of vegetation without the use of the chemical based fertilizers you buy at the local nursery or hardware store. Most gardeners add various mixtures of chemical fertilizers to the soil to feed the plants they are attempting to grow. Organic gardeners, on the other hand, add natural forms of organic material such as earthworm castings, manure, alfalfa pellets and humus from a compost pile to the soil to encourage the growth of beneficial microorganisms which, in turn, feed the plants and vegetables they wish to grow. In this respect, organic fertilizers such as bone meal and fish meal are similar to many of the chemical fertilizers in that they flood the soil with plant nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium; they differ, of course, from the chemical based fertilizers because they are produced from organic materials that are perfectly safe to use in a garden. In short, chemical fertilizers feed the plant directly with highly concentrated bursts of fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) produced by a chemical process while organic fertilizers feed the organisms in the soils natural ecosystem which, in turn, produce the sustained low levels of nutrients, including trace elements, necessary for healthy plant growth. Next week I will discuss the advantages of chemical fertilizers.