Welcome to our guide to organic gardening!
If you're new to growing organically or are interested in getting into it, settle in and get comfy because we'll go over everything you need to know about growing without any synthetics.
What Is Organic Gardening?
Organic gardening is gardening without any synthetic inputs.
This means that anything added to an organic garden has been harvested, collected, cultivated, or mined - but not produced chemically in a laboratory.
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. Refer to the privacy policy for more information.
While this definition is simplified and misses some nuance, it's enough to get you thinking in the right direction to understand organic.
Let's dive a little deeper and see how organic and synthetic growing methods compare...
History of Organic Gardening
Our earliest records of human agricultural practices date back some 10,000 years or more to the neolithic, when our ancestors slowly began to transition from hunting and gathering to cultivation.
In contrast, synthetic fertilizers only came into use in the mid-1800's and synthetic pesticides and herbicides in the mid-1900's.
That's about 175 years of synthetic agriculture, vs roughly 10,000 years of organic agriculture. Some 98% of our agricultural history has been completely organic and free from synthetics.
This helps put into perspective that organic agriculture is the norm, tested tried and true - while synthetic agriculture is the relatively short-lived experiment that's beginning to unravel.
Organic Gardening Paradigms
As your knowledge and understanding of organic gardening grow, multiple paths open up to you in the form of different organic gardening paradigms. These are mindsets and perspectives from which you can choose to look at organic gardening.
As with any paradigm, mindset, or perspective, each one has strengths and weaknesses. No one perspective is best. Rather, one or more may be better-suited to your unique situation, goals, climate, resources, and your own strengths and weaknesses as a grower.
I encourage you to explore all of the mindsets and approaches listed below (and more) and find what works best for you.
The Learn Dirt site is dedicated to exploring all of these perspectives, so feel free to dig deeper into the knowledge base here if you want to push your learning further.
For now, these are some of the most-common organic gardening paradigms you'll encounter:
Regenerative Gardening
Focused specifically on rebuilding soils and regenerating ecosystems, regenerative gardening is an organic gardening perspective which we focus heavily on here at Learn Dirt.
The core idea to regenerative agriculture is that you give more to the soil than you take.
This contrasts with synthetic farming where soils and ecosystems are often destroyed as a side-effect of such intrusive and unholistic management practices.
Regenerative gardening focuses on the soil as the cornerstone of the entire ecosystem. By setting your goal and metric success at soil health, rather than plant health, you can really get to the root of a healthy ecosystem and focus your time an energy there.
Healthy plants and well-balanced ecosystems are seen as inevitably side-effects of healthy soils.
To learn about the regenerative paradigm, check out our Regenerative Gardening Guide.
Leave A Comment:
Under construction, please check back soon!