Why Should We Garden Organically Anyway?

NEXT VIDEO:  The Risk Of Using Chemicals

(TRANSCRIPT)

Organic Gardening For The Beginner

WHY GARDEN ORGANICALLY?

You may have possibly been confronted with …

What do you mean a gardener can control the weeds, bugs and the animals that threaten a garden WITHOUT using chemicals?

There is no mystery.  Organic gardening is really a very simple theory.  Look at all the years our ancestors produced crops without the use of chemicals.  They didn’t have chemicals to use but did just fine and still had great gardens.  So why should it be considered such a radical process?

It only makes sense that we should be capable of learning from the early Settlers and use the same techniques.  We should be able to obtain the same results today.  It just makes more sense to use what nature has provided rather than using some mystery formula that a chemist came up with.

Use natural materials and minerals …

Take advantage of natural predators …

Recycle garden waste …

And you too can maintain an organic garden quite successfully.

There are definite advantages to gardening organically.  The food produced is more nourishing and better for your health.

Research has revealed significant differences between organically and non-organically grown food. These differences relate to food safety, primary nutrients, secondary nutrients and the health of those who consume organically grown food.

Food grown organically contains substantially higher concentrations of antioxidants and other health promoting compounds than those crops produced with pesticides.

Plus … it just TASTES BETTER!

A phenomenon noted by many people when harvesting the first vegetables from their own garden, was that everyone seemed to eat much more of a given vegetable than they did of a store bought one.

A side benefit of growing your own organic produce is the money you will save.  Plus, any excess can be sold or bartered.

Not convinced it’s a good idea yet?

In March of 2001, the American Cancer Society published a report linking the use of the herbicide glyphosate (Round-Up) with a 27% increased likelihood of contracting Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

John Hopkins University also revealed something very interesting. Home gardeners use almost 10 times more pesticide per acre than the average farmer AND that diseases caused by environmental illness, exposure to chemicals etc., is now the number one cause of death in the U.S.

With the EPA’s recent phasing out of common pesticides such as Dursban and Diazinon, we are now realizing that many of the chemicals that we thought were “safe” were never actually tested to see what their affect on the population would be. Especially the children and the elderly. The time has come to re-assess our dependence on pesticides.

However, you still may be asking why are chemicals so bad if we’ve been using them for so many years? We’ll talk about that in the next video.