USING PESTICIDES TO GROW ORGANIC CROPS

By Dan Stone of National Geographic Magazine in Change Reaction on December 4, 2012

Is it possible to grow organic fruits using pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides? That’s the question I took to Pam Marrone, an agricultural researcher in Davis, California.

It turns out it is possible. And Marrone is a person who would know. She worked for some of the bigger names in agriculture technology—Monsanto and AgraQuest—before starting her own research lab, Marrone Bio Innovations. Her market: farmers who are interested in keeping pests off crops in order to maximize the yields of the foods we all buy.http://www.agrinfobank.com

California leads the country in organic fruit and vegetable sales, but the race away from over-processed produce is nationwide. An industry study this year found that the popularity of organic produce has grown nearly 10 percent each year over the last decade, now amounting to a $30 billion chunk of the economy. Organic doesn’t mean untouched. It means that strawberry, for instance, was grown only using compounds available in nature. What Marrone does is find other compounds found elsewhere in nature to help the plant thrive.

Marrone’s lab in a small corner of Davis is unassuming. Marrone herself is anything but. No-nonsense and in a constant state of power-walking, she led me around her lab to show me how bacteria discovered in, say, a Buddhist garden or on a Hawaiian beach (both actually happened) can kill pests or fungi that destroy crops like soybeans, corn, or cucumbers. http://www.agrinfobank.com

Bad things can be used for good purposes, Marrone said. Penicillin, for example, was discovered as a mold before it was harnessed to fight infections. No genetic or chemical engineering is involved in bio-pesticide research, just testing how to naturally kill weeds with organic materials and substances that already exist.http://www.agrinfobank.com

The research is fascinating. In in order to see what materials can kill pests, you have to first fill your labs with closets of scurrying nematodes and aphids. “We breed them to learn how to kill them,” Marrone told me.

In the end, it comes down to preserving more crops for humans, not bugs. “We have seven billion people turning into nine billion people on the planet. We’re going to need to feed them,” Marrone told me. She was soon on her way to jet off to Germany to talk to other bio-pesticide innovators. “I’ve been interested in this since I was eight years old. I’m driven by the fact that [organic] products can compete with chemicals.”

Source: newswatch.nationalgeographic.com

Organic Pest Control for Tomato

Important Note: © Copyright to Agriculture Information Bank (www.agrinfobank.com), Without Publisher and Author Permission Reproduce/Reprint/Republished by any means, of this article is strongly prohibited. In case of copyright violation, strong action should be taken.

By: Barbara Nadeem

Tomato, tomahto... no matter how you pronounce it, the tomato is probabaly the most widely grown vegetable. The tomato relative ease of culture is top choice by the home gardener because of its food value and many uses.

Health benifits of Tomatoes:

One medium-sized tomato has only 35 calories. The tomato is rich in vitamins C and A, and contains small amounts of the B vitamins and potassium. Tomatoes are also very well known for their high carotenoid content. Nine different carotenoids have been identified in tomatoes, two of them are beta-carotene and lycopene. Carotenoids are thought to have a number of health benefits, such as reducing the risk of developing cancer, cardiovascular disease, and macular degeneration. There has been a lot of medical and nutritional research on lycopene; incidentally, lycopene is responsible for the red color in tomatoes. About 80 to 90% of lycopene consumed by humans comes from tomatoes. Surprisingly enough, lycopene is absorbed better from processed tomato products than from fresh tomatoes. Tomato plants are very productive. When grown as staked plants, tomatoes require a relatively small amount of space, yet are capable of producing 8 to 10 pounds or more of fruit per plant. Some of the more compact tomato cultivars can be easily grown in containers. Hence, gardeners who have limited space can still grow tomatoes.

Grab a pot, some soil and some tomato seeds and start a tomato garden.. One thing about tomatoes is that garden pests enjoy the fruits of our labors before we can...  So to deture some of these un invited guest pests here is a few organic recipes to help aid in keeping your  plants healther and your harvest of your urban garden safe..

Organic Pest Control:

Tomato plants, as members of the nightshade family, contain toxic compounds called alkaloids in their leaves. When the leaves of tomato plants are chopped, they release their alkaloids. When the alkaloids are suspended and diluted with water, they make an easy to use spray that is toxic to aphids, but still safe around plants and humans.

What You'll Need:

1.   One to two cups of tomato leaves

2. Two cups of water

3.  A strainer or cheesecloth

4. Spray bottle

To make tomato leaf spray, simply soak one to two cups of chopped tomato leaves in two cups of water. Let it steep overnight. To make the spray, strain the leaves out of the liquid using cheesecloth or a fine strainer. Add another one to two cups of water to the liquid and add it to a spray bottle.

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Garlic Oil Spray

Organic gardeners have long relied on garlic as part of their pest-fighting arsenal. Garlic contains sulfur, which, besides being toxic to pests, is also an antibacterial and antifungal agent. The dish soap in this mixture also breaks down the bodies of soft-bodied pests, such as aphids.

What You'll Need:

1.        Three to four cloves of garlic

2.        Mineral oil

3.        Strainer or cheesecloth

4.        Liquid dish soap

5.        Water

6.     Spray bottle

To make garlic oil spray, mince or finely chop three to four cloves of garlic, and add them to two teaspoons of mineral oil. Let this mixture sit for 24 hours. Strain out the garlic pieces, and add the remaining liquid to one pint of water. Add one teaspoon of liquid dish soap. This mixture can be stored and diluted as needed. When you need to spray, use two tablespoons of the mixture added to one pint of water in a spray bottle.

To use your garlic oil spray, first test by spraying an inconspicuous part of the plant to see if your mixture harms it at all. If there are no signs of yellowing or other leaf damage after a day or two, it is safe to use. If there is leaf damage, dilute the mixture with more water and try the test again. Once you have determined that it won't harm your plant, spray the entire plant, paying special attention to the undersides of leaves.

Warning: Garlic oil is a non-selective insecticide, which means that it will kill beneficial insects (such as lady bugs, who are natural predators of aphids) just as easily as it kills the bad guys. It's best to keep as many beneficials around as possible. This spray should only be used if you haven't seen any beneficial bugs in your garden. The tomato leaf recipe, above, won't harm beneficials, so you should use that if you're lucky enough to have some beneficials in your garden.

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you can also spray the plants with any of a number of homemade insect deterrents. While this isn’t as effective as manually removing them, it will kill quite a few bugs and won’t hurt the plants, the environment, or you.

Some things to try:

Soapy water. Any biodegradable liquid soap will do. Use about a ¼ cup of soap per gallon of water, and rinse the plants with clean water an hour or so after you spray them so that the soap doesn’t burn their leaves.

Oily water. Blend about a ¼ cup canola or olive oil with one gallon of water and spray on plants. Remember to shake the spray bottle frequently to keep things mixed up.

Hot pepper spray. To make your own, puree four or five chili peppers with a gallon of water, strain, and spray. This is even more effective if you let the puree age for a day or so before you strain and use it.

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you can also spray the plants with any of a number of homemade insect deterrents. While this isn’t as effective as manually removing them, it will kill quite a few bugs and won’t hurt the plants, the environment, or you. So get out the pots, get the soil and seeds and start gardening.

A Beginner's Guide to Organic Gardening

Gardening is not too complex. Almost all of us—probably in grade school—planted a seed in a cup of dirt, watered it, and watched it grow. But creating a garden that produces fresh food and flowers all season is not so elementary, especially to those who did not grow up gardening. 

So we've compiled this guide to the basics of organic gardening and the keys to success we've learned over the years. When you're done reading, look at your thumb—you may see a tint of green that wasn't there before.

Planting Seeds

1. Make your bed. About three weeks before you are ready to plant, after the soil has dried so that it doesn't clump when you pick up a fistful, sink a fork into the earth. Loosen it down to about 12 inches, add a half-inch layer of compost, and rake the surface of your garden until it has no weeds, dirt clumps, or big stones. Over the next three weeks, pull any weeds that come up. Raking and then letting the soil sit for a few weeks brings out weed seeds that were lurking in the soil.

2. Dig a furrow—or not. If you like symmetry and order, carve out a shallow trench with a hoe or hand trowel. But you don't have to plant in rows. You can organize your garden as a grid, with plants at the four corners of each square, or you can choose not to organize it at all. Whichever style you go with, dig shallow furrows or holes for the seeds.

3. Water lightly. Moisten but don't soak the soil. Watering before rather than after planting the seeds protects them from being swamped, or washed up and out of the soil.

4. Sow the seeds. Spread the seeds through the trench or place two or three in each planting hole. The seed packet tells you how far apart to plant them. If you plant too closely, you can thin them after they come up and, in many cases, eat the thinnings.

5. Cover with soil. As a rule of thumb, bury seeds only about as deep as their diameter. Sprinkle soil on top of the seeds, pressing gently to ensure they have contact with the soil. A few seeds, such as lettuce and dill, need light to sprout, so cover them sparingly. (Seed packets tell you if they need light to germinate.)

6. Keep moist. Sprinkle water on the seedbed whenever the surface is dry until all the seeds have sprouted.

Key to success: Add compost to planting holes to improve the soil's structure, provide slow-release nutrients, and activate the beneficial microbes in the soil.

Six Essential Tools

• Trowel
• Hand-weeding tool
• Hoe
• Pruners
• Fork
• Spade

Transplanting:

These steps apply to vegetables you get in packs at the garden center, as well as annual and perennial flowers. 

1. Dig a hole. Make the planting hole as deep as the plant's container and about double the diameter. 

2. Water the plant. Give it a drink before planting, because until the roots start growing, they can't draw water from the soil. 

3. Remove the plant from the pot. Place your hand on top of the pot, with your fingers around the plant's stem. Turn the pot upside down and gently squeeze it or push the plant out from the bottom with your other hand. If you must tug it out, pull it by its leaves rather than the stem (if a leaf comes off, no harm done; damage the stem, and the plant will not survive). 

4. Check the roots. If the roots have wrapped around and around the plant, gently pull a few loose with your fingers. 

5. Place it in the hole. Set the plant in the hole at the same depth it was in its pot, generally where the stem meets the roots. Tomatoes are an exception to this rule—plant them deeper. 

 6. Replace soil and then water. Backfill the hole with the soil you removed and press gently to ensure that the roots have solid contact with the soil. Be sure the soil stays consistently moist until you see the plant start to grow. 

Key to success: Transplant on an overcast day to give the plants a chance to adjust to their new home without being withered by direct sun.

Managing Weeds:

Weeds siphon water and nutrients away from your garden w, they can harbor pests, and they sure can make your garden look a mess. But you don't need to spray toxic herbicides, which are harmful to people, pets, and wildlife, to keep plant invaders out of your organic garden. Use these strategies instead.

Mulch. Keep your soil covered at all times to prevent light from reaching weed seeds. Spread a thick layer (2 or more inches deep) of organic mulch—straw, dried grass clippings, shredded leaves—on your garden each spring and replenish it throughout the growing season. Bonus: The mulch nourishes your soil as it decomposes. For even better weed protection, use several sheets of newspaper, kraft paper (such as grocery bags), or cardboard under these mulches. They are nearly impenetrable by weeds.

Hand-pull. Sounds like a lot of work, we know. But pulling out a few weeds every day or at least every week keeps them from getting out of control and brings you up close to your garden so you can inspect your plants for problems. Keep a bale of straw or a pile of grass clippings on hand so you'll have mulch on demand to help prevent weeds from returning after you've pulled them.

Hoe. Use a hoe's sharp edge to sever weed stems from their roots just below the soil surface. Forget about the square-headed traditional garden hoe for this job—get a stirrup-shaped oscillating or a swan-neck hoe instead. To hoe your garden without cultivating a backache, hold the hoe as you would a broom.

Spread corn. You can suppress the growth of weed seeds early in the season by spreading corn-gluten meal. This works best in established lawns. Corn-gluten meal, a by-product of corn processing that is safe for people, pets, and wildlife, inhibits the germination of seeds and fertilizes at the same time. Bear in mind, once the weeds have grown beyond the sprout stage, corn gluten does not affect them. Also, corn gluten doesn't discriminate between seeds you want to sprout and those you don't want, so avoid using corn-gluten meal where and when you've sown seeds.

Solarize. Where you have a persistent weed problem or you need to clear a thick mat of weeds from a brand-new bed, enlist the sun's help. In late spring or early summer, pull, hoe, or rake out as many weeds as you can from the bed. Then moisten the soil and cover it with a tight layer of clear plastic, weighting or burying the edges. Leave the plastic in place for six weeks so the sun cooks any remaining weed seeds.

Be persistent. This is your most important long-range weapon against weeds. Mulch, and pull or hoe the weeds for a few minutes whenever you visit your garden. Do these things consistently for a few seasons, and you will slowly but surely expel problem invaders for good.

Key to success: Weeds come out easily when the soil is moist, so think of a summer rainstorm as an opportunity to free your garden from a weed infestation.

Use This.....................Not That
Fish and seaweed fertilizer..Miracle-Gro
Insecticidal soap............Sevin
Clove oil herbicide..........Roundup
Compost......................Bagged synthetic fertilizer

Controlling Pests:

Whenever you see insects in your garden, remember this: Most are no threat to plants, many are even beneficial, and all of them, even the pests that eat your plants, are an integral part of the ecosystem you are cultivating. But what do you do when the pests seem to have the upper hand? You don't want to enforce a "no-fly zone" with pesticides. They're dangerous for you to have and to use, and they harm wildlife and contaminate water. Instead, use safe, organic techniques and products to keep the pests in balance.

Grow healthy plants. The best defenses against insect attack are preventive measures. Pests target weak or unhealthy plants, so choose plants that are suited to the conditions you are putting them in and they'll be less stressed. Don't let plants be too wet, too dry, or too shaded. Use lots of compost, but be sparing with high-nitrogen fertilizers, if you must use them at all.

Integrate, don't segregate. Mix different vegetables, herbs, and flowers together in your beds. This keeps pests from zeroing in on a whole crop of their target plant.

Encourage Pests' Predators. The most effective and natural way to control pests is to rely on the food chain. Plant herbs and flowers among your vegetables to lure predatory insects such as ladybugs and green lacewings, which feed on flowers' nectar while their larvae consume pests. Put out a birdbath to enlist the appetites of songbirds to your cause. Treat toads, lizards, and garter snakes as welcome allies, too.

Build Barriers. Row cover is a woven fabric that lets light, air, and water reach plants, but keeps pests (including deer) away from them. You'll find it in local garden centers, in catalogs, and online. The best-known brand is Reemay.

Target The Treatment. When prevention is no match for infestation, take the time to choose the right organic tool to solve your problem. Start by making sure you have correctly identified the pest and confirmed it is the cause of the symptoms you've found. Consult your local Cooperative Extension office (csrees.usda.gov) if you need help. 

Then, depending on the pest, you can arm yourself with soap or hot-pepper sprays, horticultural oil, or Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium that disrupts the digestion of caterpillars and other leaf-eaters.

Surrender. As we said, insects attack plants under stress. Do you have enough healthy plants to spare the sickly ones? Can you restore sickly plants to robust health so they can resist insect attack? If not, let the pests do their worst, then watch as their predators flock to your garden and protect your healthy plants.

Key To Success: Check the undersides of leaves when applying organic pest control—insects often hide out of sight.

Source of Article: http://www.organicgardening.com/

History and Concepts of food quality and safety in Organic

Organic agriculture is a multifaceted phenomenon in the field of agriculture and food production. On the one hand, it is a low external input production technique originating from both traditional and alternative farming practices developed in the late 19th and early 20th century and from European and

USA contexts of intensive agriculture. On the other hand, it reflects societal debates on the sustainability of agriculture, on food quality and nutritional habits and on ethical issues like animal welfare. A growing number of scientists and policy makers qualify organic agriculture as an efficient and holistic approach to reach the multiple goals of agriculture including food security, sustainable use of natural resources and the dignity of creatures (Jaber, 2000).

Organic farming is a food production method defined at great length in many international (e.g. Codex Alimentarius), supranational (e.g. EU Regulation on Organic Farming) and national (e.g. the US National Organic Program (NOP), the Japanese Agricultural Standard for Organic Products (JAS) or the Swiss Regulation on Organic Farming) standards.

In the developed world, crop production was intensified in the 19th and first half of the 20th century by the use of commercial fertilizers. Soluble phosphorus and nitrogen triggered a first increase in yield levels. The next step in the intensification of agriculture was the widespread use of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides, a practice that also made many conventional farmers feel uncomfortable. The pursuit of yield increases also took hold in livestock husbandry, leading to changes in feeding regimes, industrialized methods for keeping animals and increasing use (and misuse) of veterinary medicines (e.g. antibiotics, anthelmintics) and growth hormones. The arrival andcontinuous expansion of organic farming has to be seen against this background of continuous intensification of food production and the associated negative impact on environment and biodiversity (Stolze  et al., 2000; Stoate  et al., 2001; Pyček  et al., 2005).

Although it is perceived by the public as a rather uniform and regulated farming method, organic farming has had a range of origins and a multifaceted development until standardization started in Europe in the late 1980s. The most important of these historical food and farming concepts are described in this chapter. Although in some cases only of historical interest, these concepts reveal the background of modern organic farming and food processing and help to elucidate some of its characteristics.

Lately, the progress in organic farming has been dominated by standard setting, their harmonization and the introduction of equal certificates. These activities were driven  by (a) fears among organic farmers that organic standards and principles may be compromised by competing strategies like integrated pest management (IPM) or integrated production (IP), (b) consumers who wanted protection from deceit and (c) emerging markets (in particular supermarket chains) in search of certified quality standards. In food markets worldwide, organic foods represented the first food standards, which defined, audited and certified a specific food production process (tracking) rather than specific product properties (e.g. size or colour of vegetables) or composition of the end product (tracing). Such a process-oriented approach in quality management was necessary as organic and conventional foods were difficult to distinguish.

History of different food concepts of organic farming

One of the earliest sources of inspiration for organic farming was the concept of naturalness  of foods. It derived from different ecosocial movements of the early 20th century like the ‘naturalist’, the ‘vegetarian’ and the ‘reform’ philosophies. Of particular influence was the German  Lebensreform  movement, which became important during the time of the Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933). Deteriorations in the living conditions of people during the transition from an agrarian to an industrialised society were correlated with the ‘unnaturalness’ of the living conditions of the cities (Vogt, 2000). Back to nature was seen as an escape and alternative. Medical doctors and nutritionists

like Werner Kollath, Max Bircher-Benner or Stefan Steinmetz propagated whole food (raw vegetables and fruits, whole meal bread or muesli). In this context, the pioneers of ‘natural’ husbandry and gardening, the Germans Julius Hensel, Heinrich Bauernfeind, Ewald Könemann or the Swiss Mina Hofstetter, experimented – among other farming and gardening techniques – with different rock powders as natural fertilizers to cure the negative effects of mineral sources of nutrients (Vogt, 2000). It can be concluded that ‘natural’ husbandry was the first concept of organic farming in Europe, which developequickly from lifestyle movements in the 1920s to an alternative farming method based on the emerging soil and agricultural sciences and on practical farming and gardening experience in the 1930s.

Such idealistic ‘back to nature’ movements also developed in other parts of Europe. Almost contemporaneously, a group of British writers including Harold John Massingham, Adrian Bell and Rolf Gardiner, promoted their vision of a revitalised countryside (Moore-Colyer, 2001). Central to this vision was an agriculture based on organic principles and this movement became one of the origins of Soil Association which was founded in 1946.

The concept of the vitality of food was raised for the first time by Rudolf Steiner in his seven lectures in 1924 (Steiner, 1929). The emphasis of his lectures was less ecological or agronomical, but focused on describing his views on the deterioration of modern food quality. As part of a wider ‘holistic’ philosophy called anthroposophy which covered education, art, social theory and science, Steiner developed a spiritually based plant, animal and human nutrition theory, where the real quality of food was not linked to compounds and their metabolisms, but to the spiritual forces which are supposed to ‘bound’ to them. Many agricultural practices he introduced (e.g. biodynamic preparations, the consideration of lunar or cosmic rhythms when cultivating, sowing or harvesting) aimed to influence these spiritual forces, which were in Steiner’s thinking vital for all organisms (Endres and Schad, 1997). Subsequently, anthroposophic scientists introduced the term ‘vital quality’ (Balzer-Graf and Balzer, 1991; Bloksma  et al., 2001).

The efficacy of the specific biodynamic agronomic measures introduced by Steiner has been studied extensively over the last 75 years, but focused mainly on investigations into the way that lunar cycles and biodynamic preparations affect yield, the composition and the nutritional quality of crops. The relative efficacy of these measures is often considered to be less than that of other agricultural measures like variety choice, the intensity of organic fertilization, soil tillage and/or other permitted plant protection measures. To conclude, the improvements achieved by these specific biodynamic techniques are small, often not reproducible and therefore, from a scientific point of view, obsolete. However disenchanting the lack of activity of these specific measures might be, the overall management approach taken by biodynamic farming as a whole is a surprisingly effective and efficient one. In addition, long-term biodynamic soil management has been shown to achieve greater improvements in soil biological activity, structural stability and inherent fertility than more ‘mainstream’ organic management practices in the long-term field trial DOK where bioDynamic, Organic and conventional (in German Konventionell) plots have been compared since 1977 (Mäder et al., 2002).

Since Steiner’s aim was to improve ‘immaterial’ qualities of foods, anthroposophic scientists have developed analytical methods, which aim to visualize this kind of ‘inner’ quality. This is done by preparing watery solutions of the plant, meat or milk (= juices) which are then brought into reaction with metallic salts like copper chloride (copper chloride crystallization method) or silver nitrate (two different capillary picture methods). The quality of the pictures is either interpreted by visual evaluation or by computerized image texture analysis (Meier-Ploeger  et al., 2003). Both interpretations are reproducible and the results are often correlated with standard food analytical quality parameters (e.g. for a case study comparing organic and conventional apples, see Weibel et al., 2000). The main concept of analysing the pictures created by such methods is that crops grown under optimal biodynamic conditions should have a higher degree of ‘order’ and should be better organized and structured. However, there are currently no sound scientific data that validate and calibrate such methods against standard food composition and metabolic profiling analyses and no studies that demonstrate that consumption of food showing a greater level of ‘order’ when assessed by ‘picture forming methods’ results in improved animal or human health. Another important concept introduced by Steiner was that of ‘holism’ or ‘integrity’  of food and farming (Steiner, 1929). Steiner saw a farm as an organism with an inner structure and functionality and not purely as a business with different lines of production. He stressed greatly the common bonds between physiological processes in soils, plants and livestock. This was one reason why organs of cattle (e.g. cow horns or bovine peritoneum) played an important role in the production of biodynamic preparations which aimed to improve soil fertility and plant quality. He believed that, like an organism, a farm has to be managed as a whole unit in its full complexity and integrity.

Steiner was influenced by the theory of ‘emergent properties’ which was developed in the 19th century and which is still used today to characterize very complex systems and phenomena, in nature, physics or engineering (Fromm, 2004). An emergent property can appear when a number of simple subsystems operate as a collective and show more complex and often unexpected behaviours which cannot be explained by adding up the behavior of the single subsystems. As a consequence, biodynamic farmers are very sceptical about isolated partial interventions (e.g. phytomedical treatments) and rely very much upon preventive and long-term strategies of farm management.

The concept of self regulating and healthy systems was introduced by the English pioneer Sir Albert Howard who stated in the 1930s: ‘[E]vidence for the view that a fertile soil means healthy crops, healthy animals, and healthy human beings is rapidly accumulating. At least half of the millions spent every year in trying to protect all three from disease in every form would be unnecessary the moment our soils are restored and our population is fed on the fresh produce of fertile land’ (Howard, 1942). Lady Eve Balfour, the founder of the Soil Association in Great Britain later described the same concept: ‘The health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible’ (Balfour, 1943). To some extent this concept of a self-regulating nature dovetailed with the idealisation of nature by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Albert Howard’s words:

The crops and livestock look after themselves. Nature has never found it necessary to design the equivalent of the spraying machine and the poison spray for the control of insect and fungus pests. There is nothing in the nature of vaccines and serums for the protection of the livestock. It is true that all kinds of diseases are to be found here and there among the plants and animals of the forest, but these never assume large proportions. The principle followed is that the plants and animals can very well protect themselves even when such things as parasites are to be found in their midst. Nature’s rule in these matters is to live and let live (Howard, 1943).

Source: Handbook of organic food safety and quality

Edited by

Julia Cooper, Urs Niggli and Carlo Leifert

2007, W OODHEAD   PUBLISHING   LIMITED

Cambridge, England

Going Organic

“Going Organic”

As this article will show, “going organic” is not simply a question of changing your brand of pesticide or fertilizer (though you may well do this). It involves a change of approach, treating the garden as a complete entity where natural systems are promoted and encouraged to thrive. You will start developing long-term strategies for maintaining soil fertility and managing pests and diseases.

Getting started

The best way to go organic is to take the plunge—to start using organic methods, and give up chemical methods, in every area of your yard at once. This article is full of practical advice to help in the conversion process, whether you’re starting with bare ground, clearing a weed patch, or converting an existing garden. These practical guidelines let you know just what is, and isn’t, appropriate to do or use in an organic garden. They concentrate on practices that aim to make a garden as self-sufficient as possible—but, recognizing that there may be a need to buy organic fertilizers, for example, or to use a pest-killing spray, particularly when you are converting a garden, the Guidelines also advise on what products are acceptable.

How long does it take?

Commercial growers converting to organic methods are required to go through a transition period, usually three years. During this period the land is managed organically, but produce cannot yet be sold as organic. Depending on past management, you may find that your garden takes time to adapt, or everything may flourish from the start! 

Change the way you shop

Organic gardening products are available in some garden centers. specialty mail order catalogs usually supply a greater range. In an ideal world, anything you use in an organic garden would itself have been grown or produced organically. unfortunately, this is not yet possible; although the range is growing, at times you will have to use conventionally grown seed, for example, or manure from animals not raised organically. To conform to the organic principles of sustainability, always try to reuse and recycle waste materials from your own garden and locality. One exception to this rule is to dispose of any unsuitable pesticides and herbicides as soon as possible. However, you must not add these to household trash or pour them down sinks or sewers. Call your university extension for advice on disposing of them safely.

Outside help

If you are new to organics, or simply need advice or new ideas, there are organizations that can help. Organic gardening groups can be found all over the country, and these are especially helpful for advice on local subjects such as tackling problem soil. Your university extension service may be able to suggest organic solutions to pest problems. And many of the large gardening websites have organic forums where you can find advice or encouragement.