Like anything else in this wide wonderful world, there really isn’t a universally accepted definition for the term “Organic Gardening”. Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “grown with only animal or vegetable fertilizers, as manure, bone meal, compost, etc.”. An expanded definition would be that the main goal is to garden by improving the health of the soil in its natural landscape, while growing plants without using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides. You’ll also find that there seem to exist some subtle and some not so subtle variations of the organic gardening philosophy. There are basically 5 variations or categories that organic gardeners fall into …
· Basic Organic Gardeners garden year round basing their growing decisions on common sense and environmental conditions. They follow the basic rules as defined above to maximize crop production.
· Biodynamic Organic Gardeners take it a step farther by religiously following astrological signs for seasonal planting as well as when organic materials should be used. These critical timing issues drive their focus to maximize the physical and spiritual needs of nature rather than being concerned only with a good crop.
· Natural Organic Gardeners are probably considered the rebels of these groups. They’re not quite as particular when it comes to choosing organic matter for their garden. Although it still must be a safe natural product, there could be minimum preservatives or colorings in it.
· Permaculture is the most limiting type of organic gardening because the gardener can only use materials from their own farm or area to make compost or fertilizers. Not being able to use outside sources can really limit the type and amount of crops grown.
· The “USDA certified organic” variation is loosely defined as number five. Here’s a link to the USDA description (http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/ofp/ofp.shtml). It’s over 1800 words and since it’s from the government, it probably complicates the discussion in more ways than we care to mention, so we’ll leave any of that for a later post.
The bottom line is that most people who do organic gardening don’t fit easily into one of the categories above. We tend to use techniques and ideas from each of them to reach our goal of growing healthy, nutritious food.