What is Organic Gardening?

Organic gardening can be defined as a practice of re-cycling earth's products to produce a more natural, healthy life for, be it a plant, animal or human life. It usually involves the art of composting and using the composted material as a mulch or medium for growing almost anything. The word, "compost" is derived from the Latin verb "componere" which means; put together. It also involves the practice of dealing with nature's undesirable insects and plant life without using soil killers, also known as chemicals.

The goal in your gardening is to build healthy soil that will provide all the nutrients you plants need to be healthy. Healthy soil is living soil. It is full of microorganisms constantly breaking down plant material and making nutrients available to the plants. There is a whole-unseen world of activity going on underneath your plants and providing stimulation and nutrition to their roots. These tiny critters are naturally present in the soil; they really want to do their job. All they need is a little encouragement to grow.

They're many natural ingredients for good soil building. A few of them are water, seaweed, fish emulsion, used coffee and tea grounds, cow and other animal manures, just to name a few.

The principles to organic gardening are simple.

• Stop using poisons. Vow to use only organic fertilizer and pesticides
  
• Pledge to support your organic goals by engaging in sound horticultural practices such as composting, companion planting and inter planting. Learn to appreciate frogs, lizards and even a few garden pests.
  
• Get a soil test done.
  
• Amend the soil with 1 to 2 inches of organic compost once a year
  
• Choose a wide variety of plants. A diverse planting helps deter insects and keeps disease from spreading fast. Feed the plants as well as you do the soil, but use organic fertilizers on your plants.
  
• Re-cycle whenever possible
  
• Talk to other organic gardeners.
  

In conclusion, a sensible definition of Organic Gardening could be:

"The science and art of gardening by incorporating the entire landscape design and environment to improve and minimize the gardens soil, health, structure, testure as well as maximize the production and health of developing plants without using synthetic commercial fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides."