Where Organic Gardening Started For Me
About me – Since very early in my life I have been gardening. Sometimes because I wanted something to eat, like a carrot fresh from the ground. Other times, because I had to weed the rows if I wanted to stop for ice-cream after baseball practice. In rural New Brunswick, Canada in the mid eighties, there was no organic gardening, as we know it today. There was only gardening, and it was everywhere and it was, by and large, organic. Most everyone gardened, at least in comparison to today. Everyone cooked with the fruits of their labors, and shared any abundance with their neighbours and family.
Somewhere between then and now we have lost the sense of fulfillment and gratitude that comes with planting and harvesting from your own land. Many don’t have the large swaths of land required for a garden that would suffice our families for the year. At least we don’t believe we do. Many also don’t believe that we have the required time to commit to tending a garden throughout the growing season. We seem to live in an instant world. Gardening and land”scaping”, have become more industrial and commercial and instant as time goes on. On Monday there could be a bare lot. Tuesday, there is what appears to be an established lawn, and twenty year old tress!
About me –The Creation of Eat My Shrubs
If we slow down, gardening and land “care”, especially using what we now refer to as “organic practices”, reminds us to enjoy the life that we work so hard to create for ourselves. And, with modern innovations of ancient practices, the time and space commitment that has hindered us before are becoming less and less of an issue. The will continue as people are reminded of how things from the ground are supposed to taste. Also, how important it is to really think about what we put in out body for nourishment.
Out of that thinking for my own family, Eat MY Shrubs was created. A way to bring people back, at least in modern terms, to a way of living that was once just living. Now it is considered “organic” or “sustainable”.
About me – In my work, there are no harsh chemicals. I think the roughest thing I use is cleaning vinegar. From time to time a small machine is required to complete a task economically. I do move material with a pickup truck, so there is fossil fuel usage, however, only as needed. Hand pruners and reel or electric mowers, when properly maintained and used, do a superior job than most gas powered tools, when looking from a plant health point of view. That is why essential oils have become an important part of my practice. They are what the plants use, nothing foreign to throw off the chemical balance of the soil.
About me – Organic Gardening Lessons
When we use organic, regenerative practices, the soil begins to come alive once again. Rushed practices and instant remedies to our properties over the years have stripped most of the life away from the soil. There is endless evidence of this. Every spring herbicides and pesticides, unnecessary fertilizers and enhancers, are sprayed and sprinkled all over the soil. Killing many beneficial animals, fungi, and bacteria. They then have to work all summer to recover their population. Just to freeze or go dormant in the winter, and be bombarded again in the spring.
Organic gardening teaches that everything is on the landscape for a reason. Realize what that reason is and altering something in the land to discourage or encourage what we want to happen, will be much less. We must work with the garden to come to an agreement as to what the space will look like. If we give the microbes and fungi that we want the food they need, and deprive the microbes and fungi that we do not want of their food. We stack the deck for the beneficial life to win, and in turn, we get the results we desire, or some form of them.
Endless pulling of plants and spraying compacted ground is not going to keep the tap roots like thistle and dandelions away. Relieving the compaction and improving the microbial life that increase the water and air holding ability of the soil, that will. It just takes a bit of time.
Organic Gardening Needed A Name
About me – The name Eat MY Shrubs came from my love of the idea of planting beautiful gardens that are completely edible! Growing food does not have to be in a rectangular shaped, tilled-row garden. The best gardens are interplanted polycultures. Some plants are only there to benefit the plants that we want to eat. They may attract beneficial insects, or fool herbaceous animals away from the plant we actually want. All this without the use of harmful chemicals. Practices that destroy what we now realize is the delicate balance of life in the soil.
Hence the tagline, “Not only are they beautiful, you can Eat MY Shrubs”
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About me – Also, Check out SOUL for even more information. Click the image below.
