Organic horticulture

Overview

Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heritage-species preservation.

The Latin words hortus (garden plant) and cultura (culture) together form horticulture, classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture is also sometimes defined simply as “agriculture minus the plough (or plow).” Instead of the plough, horticulture makes use of human labour and gardener’s cultivation tools, or of small machine tools like rotary tillers.

General

Mulches, cover crops, compost, manures, and ground-rock mineral supplements are soil-building mainstays. Through care and good soil condition, it is hoped that insect, fungal,or other problems that sometimes plague plants can be avoided. However, pheromone traps, insecticidal soap sprays, and other pest-control methods available to organic farmers are also sometimes utilized by organic horticulturists.

Horticulture involves five areas of study. These areas are floriculture (includes production and marketing of floral crops), landscape horticulture (includes production, marketing and maintenance of landscape plants), olericulture (includes production and marketing of vegetables), pomology (includes production and marketing of fruits), and postharvest physiology (involves maintaining quality and preventing spoilage of horticultural crops). All of these can be, and sometimes are, pursued according to the principles of organic cultivation.

Organic horticulture (or organic gardening) is based on knowledge and techniques gathered over thousands of years. In general terms, organic horticulture involves natural processes, often taking place over extended periods of time, and a holistic approach - while chemical-based horticulture focuses on immediate, isolated effects and reductionist strategies.

Organic gardening systems

There are a number of formal organic gardening and farming systems that prescribe specific techniques. They tend to be more specific than, and fit within, general organic standards. Biodynamic farming is an approach based on the esoteric teachings of Rudolf Steiner. The Japanese farmer and writer Masanobu Fukuoka invented a no-till system for small-scale grain production that he called Natural Farming. French intensive and biointensive methods and SPIN Farming (Small Plot INtensive) are all small scale gardening techniques.

A garden is more than just a means of providing food, it is a model of what is possible in your community - everyone could have a garden of some kind (container, growing box, raised bed) and produce healthy, nutritious organic food - promoting a more sustainable way of living that would encourage their local economy - a farmers market, a place to pass on gardening experience, and a sharing of bounty. A simple 4' x 8' (32 square feet) raised bed garden based on the principles of bio-intensive planting and square foot gardening uses fewer nutrients and less water, and could keep a family, or community, supplied with an abundance of healthy, nutritious organic greens, while promoting a more sustainable way of living.

Differing approaches to pest control are equally notable. In chemical horticulture, a specific insecticide may be applied to quickly kill off a particular insect pest. Chemical controls can dramatically reduce pest populations in the short term, yet by unavoidably killing (or starving) natural predator insects and animals, cause an increase in the pest population in the long term. Repeated use of insecticides and herbicides and other pesticides also encourages rapid natural selection of resistant insects, plants and other organisms, necessitating increased use, or requiring new, more powerful controls.

In contrast, organic horticulture tends to tolerate some pest populations while taking the long view. Organic pest control involves the cumulative effect of many techniques, including:

• Allowing for an acceptable level of pest damage
• Encouraging predatory beneficial insects to flourish and eat pests
• Encouraging beneficial microorganisms
• Careful plant selection, choosing disease-resistant varieties
• Planting companion crops that discourage or divert pests
• Using row covers to protect crop plants during pest migration periods
• Rotating crops to different locations from year to year to interrupt pest reproduction cycles
• Using insect traps to monitor and control insect populations

Each of these techniques also provides other benefits — soil protection and improvement, fertilization, pollination, water Conservation, season extension, etc. — and these benefits are both complementary and cumulative in overall effect on site health.
Effective organic pest control requires a thorough understanding of pest life cycles and interactions.

Organic pest control is not synonymous, but shares some concepts with integrated pest management.

References

External links

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