3 Why Organic Gardening

by Doug
(in my garden)

Why Organic Gardening?

If I was being smart-mouthed about it, I’d ask the exact opposite, “Why Not Organic Gardening?”

Let’s look at the data.

Personal Health

There are an increasing number of studies showing that incredibly small amounts of chemicals in the parts per billion range can have profound effects on human and ecological health.

We’re not talking the most obvious forms of health defects such as cancer (although some chemicals are indeed cancer causing and childhood cancer rates are skyrocketing). We’re talking more insidious problems such as potential linkages to childhood problems and reproductive failures.

We’re talking about chemicals mimicking human hormones and tricking our bodies into doing things it normally wouldn’t do (like turn on switches in fetal development before they are designed by nature to be turned on resulting in higher birth defects and possible linkages to conditions such as A.D.D.). We’re talking about linking the use of chemicals in our environment to health problems such as Parkinson’s (a neural degeneration) among adults.

Many of the human trials were done on young, healthy adult males - making the effects on other populations rather suspect. So if you’re a pregnant woman, you might want a different set of standards than were used in some of the original testing.


Personal Sense of Wellbeing

OK - we all know that some major chemicals such as DDT are tremendously harmful to the environment. What is little known is that while this chemical is banned in western countries, it is still legal to be shipped and used in third-world countries.

How many times have you heard an iron-clad assurance that chemical X was safe - only to see it pulled off the sales benches and deregulated as no longer safe?

Who does the testing of “safe”? Here in Canada, the companies producing the product are responsible for providing the data. We use the same data used in the U.S. Trust it?

How many of the major chemical companies have been convicted of polluting?


Scare Tactics

Those are scare tactics used by organic proponents and frankly, while they concern me, these are not some of the reasons I garden organically.


Pest Controls

We’ve all seen numerous examples of pests and diseases that are no longer controlled by Spray X - now we have to use the new improved Spray X2 - a heavier version of X. The plant, insect or disease develops resistance to the spray and we’re in a war with nature to find the most potent chemical before she finds the plants that will resist it.

There are an increasing number of weeds that are resistant to Glyphosate (Roundup) the most popular herbicide on the planet. Sooner or later, (mostly sooner) we’re going to see those weeds spreading to replace the susceptible weeds.

This resistance buildup happens faster in insect and disease populations. Ask any rose grower if the old chemicals for black spot still work or whether they have to use something “new” and more potent.

Frankly, chemicals don’t work as well as they are advertised to do.

This reminds me of an old farming story - “In the old days, using old-fashioned farming methods, farmers used to lose around 50% of their crops to weeds, insects and storage fungal diseases. Thanks to modern technology, modern fertilizers and weed control, farmers now only lose 50% of their crops.”

Learning how to work with nature and control pests organically is a bit of a challenge but in the long run it works considerably better than the spray-and-pray method.

Organic gardening is less expensive and frankly, works as well as or better than chemical gardening techniques.

Lazy Gardeners

Now, here’s where I get into a bit of a rant. (warning) Chemical gardening promises a silver bullet for gardening problems. Put this on that - it disappears and no more weeds. Spray this on that - no more aphids and you’re good to go. Whack this with that and watch those plant diseases die. Want a weed-free lawn without work? No problem sir, step right up and spread this on your lawn. Chemical gardening promises that they can “fix” a problem with an application of elixir. It’s easy and North Americans (indeed many western countries) are lazy gardeners wanting an easy fix instead of a good fix.


Most North American gardeners aren’t gardeners in any sense of the word. A gardener understands what goes on in the garden. Most NA gardeners don’t have a clue about the natural world (and many don’t want to) so to come face to face with a harmless June Bug is an act of natural-warfare. They’ve been told that insects are bad and need to be killed. The idea of the mass-gardener is to have a weed free lawn with a few red geraniums in a pot and a boring foundation planting of evergreens. This isn’t gardening - it’s taking care of an artificial plastic landscape. (So tell us how you really feel Doug) :-)

Combine a non-gardening, lazy population with an advanced marketing machine that preaches chemical use and silver-bullet remedies for all problems and you have a ready-made environmental disaster in the making. Which is why urban areas have higher concentrations of chemicals in the soil than farmland. Farmers use the stuff but only at rates that are approved. Homeowners figure if a little is good - more is better. The last data I saw showed that suburban homeowners had four times the level of chemicals in their lawns and gardens than farmers did on their fields.

Turn that data back to health issues and you slowly get the picture that urban folks are doing themselves in.

The Problem with Organics

You have to understand what you are doing. You have to have a relationship with the plants and insects so you know you don’t spray the big beetles that are eating the aphids. You have to know which wasp is laying eggs in the caterpillars. You have to understand ‘stuff”.

Organics doesn’t have too many magic bullets. You have to operate in a “system” of feeding, growing, weeding, insect control and plant selection that works together to form a complete and whole ecosystem. Screw up one part of that ecosystem (oh, I think I’ll just spray this once) and the entire ecosystem can crash or be damaged (spray a fungicide on the leaf - it drips to the soil where the soil fungus dies - and when this dies some of the nutrition it works on for your plant dies along with it) In an organic system, it’s all connected.

Learning to garden organically is a life-long commitment to the garden. You understand there is no magic bullet and you still insist on creating a garden - something unnatural that Ma Nature doesn’t like and still you persist against the odds. I learn something every year in my garden and I still kill plants and have crop failures as no year is ever the same as the preceding ones. But I don’t obsess about it - I just get on with figuring out “stuff” and having a better garden the next year.

The Bottom Line

In short, I garden organically because it’s better for me and for the environment. It’s better for my garden because my plants are healthier. They’ve been genetically adapted to grow in natural conditions and this works the best.

It’s better for my family because I don’t have to worry about small amounts of chemicals being carried into the house on feet that have walked across a chemical-laced lawn. Rugrats in my house are safe to roll and chew on any surface they can find.

So with a better garden - a healthier environment - can you tell me why I should use chemicals in my garden.

Feel free to add your .02 in the comments section. I’d really like to know what you think or what questions you might have.