You're a what? An Organic Gardener? Part 1

The fillers in synthetic fertilizers are not listed or regulated by the government. A company can put anything it wants to in those bags and you have no way of knowing what it is.

Manufacturing synthetic fertilizers is not environmentally friendly. Synthetic fertilizers depend on non-renewable resources and use large amounts of energy to manufacture and transport. Organic fertilizers can also use energy to transport and mine, but many organic gardeners use local resources that would otherwise be wasted.

What's Wrong with Chemicals? Well, actually, nothing. Everything has chemicals. Water is a chemical. Try to use the word synthetic instead of chemical. But, as everyone says chemical farming and gardening (even me), remind people that it's the type of chemcial that matters. Organic gardeners use natural chemcials that breakdown quickly and don't harm the environment. A lot of stuff that organic gardeners use comes for the kitchen. Other chemcials we use come from plants, animals and bacteria in our natural environment. Synthetic pesticides and herbicides can be much more persistent - they don't breakdown as quickly. They can also attach themselves to the humus in the soil and remain inactive for hundreds of years until the humus breaks down.

Synthetic pesticides also harm more than their target insect. They can kill many different types of insects at one time. Organic gardeners work to control just the pest insects. Insecticidal soap kills when it covers the insect. Horticultural oil kills by smothering the insect. Insects who come along later are not likely to be killed. But after spraying a synthetic pesticide, any insect that lands on the plant days later can still be killed. Synthetic herbicides have been found to be harmful weeks after application. Mulch controls weeds ver effectively, and it helps, not harms, your desired plants.

Why bother saving insects - a bug is a bug is a bug? Not all bugs are created equal - that's what makes your organic garden such a hot spot. Organic gardens have nematodes eating grubs, snakes eating toads, spiders eating flies, wasps larvae eating catepillers, ladybugs eating aphids. It's a real bug eat bug world out there. By encouraging and protecting the predators, you can keep your pests at an acceptable level with a lot less work than spraying. Synthetic gardeners spend a lot of time spraying to kill bugs, yet they still have insect damamge. Why not

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