What is Organic Vegetable Gardening:

More and more people are now discovering that gardening is an enjoyable and rewarding activity. With growing concerns about the use of chemicals in the food that we eat, growing your own vegetable garden organically offers the opportunity to produce, delicious food that is good for you and your family.

Almost every new product out there seems to say its 'organic' or natural', or made 'naturally' making it difficult to determine what is organic, and what is not. In your own garden, regardless if you are growing roses or vegetables, the scope of what is organic, is actually very simple; skip all the rules and regulations that government agencies have spent millions defining and instead just keep in mind a few key concepts to organic vegetable gardening.

1. Feed the Soil: Organic practices avoid the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and soil amendments which can destroy the mico-organisms in the soil.
2. Think Sustainable = Circle: Organic vegetable gardening is a sustainable activity; the soil feeds the plants; the plants feed the gardeners; the gardener composts the excess plant material back into the soil. Easy!
3. Rotate Crops: By rotating crops in your vegetable garden you are discouraging pests and diseases that destroy future crops.
4. Fix pests the organic way, cut first, spray second: Most pests can be removed by simply trimming off the infected branch or removing the infected plant and disposing of it in the garbage, not in the compost pile. If that doesn't work, move on the using an organic pest control method or product. Always look for OMRI products.
5. Tilth: Look after and care for the health or your soil, and you will be rewarded with a vigorous vegetable garden year after year.

Quick Note on the Importance of Healthy Garden Soil:

• In each tablespoon of topsoil, there are more than six million living organisms.
  
• Three quarters of all soil borne life exists in the top 6 inch of soil.