2 Steps to Organic Living

If you’ve been paying attention to gardening magazines, organic gardening has finally become very, very popular. Now that global warming is clearly here, we’re all being asked to do our parts in small ways to make a difference. Regular readers will know I rarely write about any other techniques but let me highlight the things you’re going to do this summer so you can make a difference in both the health of your own garden, your body and your community.

Let’s start right at the food store. Don’t buy anything that comes with clear plastic packaging. I’m told there’s no market for those clear egg containers and other clear plastics and while you may not see it, they’re simply landfilled rather than chopped up and sold for recycling. So don’t buy anything in clear plastic. That’s easy enough because there are alternatives for everything in this class of packaging. What’s that got to do with gardening? It sets the stage for the next level and that is to compost the things that come into your house. Ask yourself a simple question before you pick something up at the supermarket. Can I compost or recycle the packaging? If the answer is “No”, then simply pick or substitute another product.

And that leads me to composting. Get those composters working. For example, it is possible to recycle this newspaper, after you cut out this column of course, but it is also possible to compost it by shredding and laying it on the vegetable garden as mulch. The mulch will break down and your soil will be improved. This improvement has nothing to do with the “fertilizer-content” of the other articles but rather the paper itself. To turn your kitchen and other household waste into garden-gold, you can use the composters that are only $12 at the municipal centre on North Augusta road. At that price, you should consider having a bunch in the backyard to take care of all your household waste.

Compost is the heart and soul of the garden and the more research that’s done on soil structure and health, the more that compost and composting becomes important for both home and commercial gardening. If you do nothing else this summer, get the compost bin working. And if you have compost working and want to take it one step further for your lawn and garden health, learn to make compost tea. Making tea properly allows you to take the small amount of compost you make and multiply it like loaves and fishes so your entire property gets the benefit.

Want to take step two? One of the interesting things that crossed my desk this week was the higher ratio of abnormalities in fish populations closest to centres of farming or human populations. Runoff from agricultural and human waste/chemicals entered the water and fish were the victims. In our river community, we can reduce chemical runoffs by not using chemicals on our lawns and gardens. My own experience running the nursery showed me pretty clearly that organic alternatives work in all cases. This is contrary to the drumbeat that commercial spray and grow operations promote, that we’ll be overrun with weeds and bugs. My experience is that there is an organic remedy for all lawn and garden problems. You don’t have to spray for cosmetic purposes. Period.

Understand however that going “organic” doesn’t mean doing nothing. It does mean changing the things you do for your own lawn and garden health. It means starting to recycle and use compost on the garden as a first great step. It means really learning about what goes on in your lawn and garden. So yes, chemicals offer a really simple solution. Nuke the lawn of all pests and problems in one simple spray.

The problem with that second step is that it requires you actually learn something. You have to understand the garden and lawn requirements and the interaction between the various components. Those of you who really don’t give a darn won’t be impressed with having to learn something in order to control dandelions and those with a serious aspiration to couch-potato status will join that group. Who wants to spend time controlling dandelions with a simple tool when we can whack the weeds with a spray? Or pay somebody to do our polluting spraying for us? And who cares what the fish downstream think of it?

The answer to those questions is usually a guy. While there are garden-guys, most of the big garden-polluters in my experience are guys who don’t give a darn, don’t understand, or simply don’t want the hassle of having to learn something. Often it’s an “old guy” who doesn’t believe all this modern information about chemicals hurting kids. Heck, he grew up eating the stuff didn’t he? I can’t help you with stupid guys, lazy guys, or guys who refuse to learn new things. You’re on your own there; and I wish you luck with those.

The steps to good gardening are deceptively simple. You start with compost, move to compost tea so your overall garden health is improved. You stop spraying and learn how to establish natural balances in your lawn and garden. The first few seasons are going to be wonky as the balances are established but a little patience will pay off as your garden comes into balance. The lawn will be thicker, the insects will be eating each other controlling the bad guys, flowers are bigger, vegetables have more nutritional content and taste better and the river fish will thank you for your efforts. It doesn’t happen overnight and there is no magic bullet. There is good gardening or there is polluting.

Which do you pick?

photo credit: Looking for a Lighthouse