Gardeningtlc.com
TLC Ticks For
Organic Gardening
By C. Thomas
Wetherald
Organic gardening is the way of growing
vegetables and fruits with the use of things only found
in nature. Gardeners claim it's all about balance
between the soil and its nutrients, the water, the air,
and of course your
plants.
Why
would you want to indulge in organic
gardening?
 It's easy to make compost
from garden and kitchen waste. Though this is a bit more
time-consuming than buying prepared chemical pesticides
and fertilizers, it certainly can help to put garbage to
good use and so saves the environment. Besides one of the
basic tenant of organic gardening is to feed the soil and
the soil will feed the
plants.
Organic farming does not use
chemicals that may have an adverse affect on your health.
This is especially important when growing vegetables.
Repeated use of insecticides, herbicides and a
few other pesticides also encourages rapid natural
selection of resistant insects, plants and other
organisms, necessitating increased use, or requiring new,
more powerful controls. Chemical companies tell us that
the chemicals we use are safe if used according to
direction, but research shows that even tiny amounts of
poisons absorbed through the skin can cause such things as
cancer, especially in
children.
On the average, a child ingests four to five
times more cancer-causing pesticides from foods than an
adult. This can lead to various diseases later on in the
child's life. With organic
gardening, these incidents are
lessened.
Remember, pesticides contain toxins that have
only one purpose - to kill living
things.
Less harm to the environment.
Poisons are often washed into our waterways, causing death
to the native fish and polluting their habitat. So we are
encouraged to control weeds with a range of different
techniques like mulching and
hoeing.
Organic farming practices help
prevent the loss of topsoil through erosion.
The Soil Conservation Service says that an estimated 30 - 32
billion tons of soil erodes from United States farmlands every
year.
Cost savings. You really
don't need to buy costly chemical fertilizers and
pesticides with organic gardening. Many organic
recipes for the control of pest and disease come straight
from the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes other plants can be
grown as companions to the main crop. An example of this
is the marigold, which helps to repel aphids from
vegetables.
Mixing 1 tablespoon of liquid dishwashing soap and 1 cup of
cooking oil can make a cheap garden pest spray. Put 3
tablespoons of this mixture in 1 quart of water and spray on
plants.
Healthy plants attract less
insects, use a diverse plant species mix designed to
discourage predators, and to attract the good
predator bugs are the best defense. Bugs that eat
other bugs are a fantastic organic gardening pest control.
Organic gardening practices help to keep the
environment safe for our future
generations.
A simple mulch of pine needles
will help to suppress the growth of weeds as well as
keeping the moisture in. Mulching can reduce herbicide use
and is one of the best options for weed control in organic
gardens.
I
thank you for reading my article, I hope that it was
interesting and I recommend browsing through a few more or
visit the Gardeningtlc
Blog.
Be sure you pick up your copy of
the Free Report Container
Gardening.
| 
