Four Season Harvest, Eliot Coleman
Four Season Harvest, Eliot Coleman
Pgs 14-15
The Organic Garden
Let’s take a moment to discuss the benefits of organic gardening. No fearful tales are involved.I have no moral sermon. I have no plan to drown you in pages of factual data. Our home garden is organic, as it has been for thirty years, for a very practical reason. Organic methods are simpler and work better. That’s right, they work better. Chemical agriculture is one of the great myths of the 20th century. The chemical salespeople swear that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are indispensable. In our experience, they are totally superfluous. They are necessary only as a crutch for the weaknesses of industrial food production.
Basically, organic gardening means a partnership with nature.
TopNature’s gardeners are numerous and eager to help. Millions of beneficial organisms (everything from bacteria to earthworms to ground beetles) thrive in a fertile soil, and they make things go right if the gardener encourages them. The gardener does that by understanding the natural processes of the soil and aiding them with compost. The inherent stability and resilience of natural systems can be on your side if you work with them. Organic gardening is a great adventure, an expedition into a deeper and more satisfying understanding of vegetable production. You are now a participant rather than a spectator. You share creation.
A delightful bonus of organic soil care is the quality of the vegetables.
TopTo us, food is not a commodity to be produced as cheaply as possible. It is the living matter that fuels our systems. We agree with the conclusion of many other organic growers around the world that crops grown in a fertile soil are higher in food quality. It is not just the absence of the negatives—pesticides and chemicals—that makes the difference. It is also the presence of the positives. Whether the difference in composition is due to the amount of enzymes, the amino acid balance, trace minerals, unknown factors, or all of the above is yet to be determined. There are many theories. There is also increasing evidence that the biological quality of plants is vitally important because it determines the content of those plant substances which benefit human health.
TopWe are convinced that future investigations will confirm the value of food quality, just as present research has already confirmed the essential place of vegetables in the diet.
Since the key to vegetable quality is the quality of the soil in which the vegetables are grown, you want to have good raw material for the roots of your plants to forage in. Soil quality is influenced by the practices of the gardener. For a soil to be truly alive and productive, it must contain plenty of organic matter, plus the full spectrum of minerals. The soil can then feed the vegetables. A vital, alive soil will produce vital, alive vegetables.
