How to Grow Organic Vegetables this Summer

Guest Blog #120, Entry #585, July 12, 2011

Depending on the climate, the summertime may be the best time to start your vegetable garden. Growing your own vegetables ensures you can grow free from pesticides, hormones, and control the environmental factors around your food. Organic gardening has taken off, and learning how to do it for yourself is rewarding.

The summertime is perfect for starting your organic gardening

Today, our Guest Blogger gives tips for protecting your family while also protecting Mother Earth, with helpful tips for growing organic vegetables this summer.

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There are a huge variety of benefits to growing your own produce – it saves you money, it’s healthier for you and the food you’ll be eating is as fresh as can be. In addition, it is a very rewarding feeling knowing the food on your table has been planted, tended to and harvested by your very own hands.

However, there is still a vital choice to make when choosing to grow food at home – should you do it organically?

The reason that most of the world’s food is produced non-organically is that it’s easier and cheaper. Organic foods require much more attention to remove weeds and other harmful plant life, and there is a higher risk of failed crops due to interference by insects and other natural elements.

While this means that the use of pesticides and herbicides can be beneficial in order to ensure the successful growth of fruits and vegetables on a mass scale, there is little need to employ these same processes when growing food at home.

While the debate over whether buying organic is worth it runs on-and-on; with regards to growing food in your very own back garden, there really is no debate.

Most people argue against the purchase of organic foods because they perceive the additional cost to not be worth it. However, this cost is irrelevant with regards to home growth (if anything, growing food at home organically is cheaper since you don’t need to purchase pesticides, or the special equipment needed to use them, and to protect yourself from them). So, if you can prevent you and your family from consuming chemicals designed to eradicate pests –why wouldn’t you?

Organic gardening is better for your health and the environment

However, growing food without the use of chemicals is not merely about our health – it is also about the health of the environment. When pesticides are sprayed they get into our air and our water. They also affect the topsoil and are consumed by wildlife.

We are inevitably consuming these chemicals, not only by eating the foods they’re sprayed upon, but also by breathing in oxygen and by drinking our planets water.

Yet it is the effect on the earth’s topsoil that is perhaps most worrying. Topsoil is the uppermost layer of the earth’s soil and it contains the nutrients that plants need to grow. The aggressive use of chemicals on our crops is causing the topsoil to diminish in quality and in volume. This could eventually lead to a world food crisis.

The same principal applies to growing food at home. If you use pesticides, the natural make-up of your gardens topsoil will be affected, and over time, the foods that you grow will be less nutritious, and may eventually be unable to grow at all.

Discover the benefits of organic vegetable growing

While topsoil is available for purchase from many garden stores; this isn’t the point. Although it’s a good idea to purchase some new topsoil occasionally, we should still be doing all we can to take care of the existing topsoil – if we don’t, eventually there will be no new topsoil to purchase.

If you’re still not convinced that growing organically is the way to go then consider this – most people think that organic food tastes better! Many top chefs are now using organic produce as much as possible, and surely – our primary concern when we’re serving up dinner is how it tastes?

This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Boughton Loam and Turf Management. James enjoys writing about gardening and environmental issues and is keen on growing vegetables in his own garden.

For more green living ideas on Stagetecture, click here.