In recent times eating organic produce is recommended widely because it is grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, artificial pesticides and other potential toxins. One of the benefits of growing your own produce is that you can choose to go organic. Even if you are talking only about flowers and other plants, organic gardening can be good for the soil. But does organic gardening make sense? What are the organic gardening pros and cons that you should look at?
Pros of Organic Gardening
Here are some of the many benefits of organic gardening:
1. Good for health: Increasingly there is evidence that pesticides and chemical fertilizers as well as other non-organic farming techniques such as genetic modification and use of hormones are not good for health. Rise in toxicity levels, hormonal imbalances could occur. There is also the fear that the chemicals could be carcinogenic. Organic produce avoids these problems.
2. Preserves garden creatures: Creatures such as ladybugs, bees, etc. are useful for gardens because help in pollination. These are preserved in organic gardening.
3. Maintains soil quality: The soil remains free of toxins and natural fertilizers improve fertility as well as the proliferations of beneficial creatures such as worms, beneficial microbes and fungi. Organic gardening doesn’t pollute the soil the way that conventional gardening does.
4. Helps manage garbage: Organic gardening involves using manure or compost from your own home’s waste. This is an earth friendly way to manage the garbage that household produce because as much as half of all houseful garbage can be turned into valuable compost.
5. Tastes better: Organic produce tastes better than other varieties.
6. Pocket friendly: Organic gardening can mean considerable savings when you don’t buy weed killers, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Then there is the fact that growing your own produce means there is that much less to buy from the store.
Cons of Organic Gardening
Like all good things, organic gardening also has some downsides:
1. Time consuming: Organic gardening is more time consuming and less convenient. Making your own compost and then adding it to the soil can take up quite a bit of time. On the other hand, simply sprinkling chemical fertilizer around is easier and far quicker.
2. Lower yield: The yields may be lower with organic gardening. Fruit, flowers and vegetables may be more vulnerable to disease, pests and parasites. Destroying weeds and pests that are harmful to plants can increase yield and size of produce; even the appearance may be better.
3. Inconsistent results: The compost that you make could be of uneven quality and may have inconsistent results. Also improper composting can spread harmful pathogens. On the other hand chemical fertilizers may have more consistent results.
