Posts Tagged ‘organic farming’

What Is Organic Gardening

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Organic gardening is the way of growing vegetables and fruits with the use of things only found in nature.

Why would one want to indulge in organic gardening?

- One can easily make compost from garden and kitchen waste. Though this is a bit more time-consuming than buying prepared chemical pesticides and fertilizers, it certainly helps to put garbage to good use and so saves the environment.

- Organic farming does not use chemicals that may have an adverse affect on your health. This is especially important when growing vegetables. Chemical companies tell us that the chemicals we use are safe if used according to direction, but research shows that even tiny amounts of poisons absorbed through the skin can cause such things as cancer, especially in children.

On the average, a child ingests four to five times more cancer-causing pesticides from foods than an adult. This can lead to various diseases later on in the child’s life. With organic gardening, these incidents are lessened.

Remember, pesticides contain toxins that have only one purpose – to kill living things.

- Less harm to the environment. Poisons are often washed into our waterways, causing death to the native fish and polluting their habitat.

Seven Good Reasons To Grow Vegetables Yourself

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Over the last ten years there has been a switch towards mechanization and homogenization in farming, this uses pesticides, herbicides, additives, synthetic fertilizers and mass-production systems. This is having an impact on our health, we are seeing new diseases spreading from animals to human. Think bird flu, swine flu.

The World Health Organization generates reports showing that the use of chemicals and other substances in food, combined with the manufacturing systems used, can actually be a threat for our well being.

If you have space for a few pots or even a small piece of land, it is a wise decision to grow your own organic vegetable garden. Today I’m presenting you with seven reasons for doing this:

1. You will have no additives in your vegetables. Research by organic food associations has shown that additives in our food can cause heart diseases, osteoporosis, migraines and hyperactivity.

2. There will be no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers used. These chemical products are applied to obtain crops all the time regardless plagues or weather conditions, and affect the quality of the vegetables. Pesticides are poisonous to humans.

How To Turn Fish Into Fertilizer

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Organic growers are more careful about what and where their liquid organic fertilizers come from. Hence, this article discusses how liquid fish emulsions are made. First of, they are mostly made from the Menhaden fish which is not considered a human food source. However this fish is used for making oil and animal feeds. The waste from the production of this fish into oil or animal feed is the ingredient used for making liquid fish fertilizers.

The process of making liquid fertilizer starts with cooking the fish and pressing out the oils and liquids. The solids are made into fishmeal, animal feed, and other products. The oil, which is literally worth its weight in gold, is skimmed off. The liquid is boiled down until it thickens, making fish emulsion.

A small amount of phosphoric acid is added to the fish emulsion to lower the pH. Lowering the pH makes the liquid fertilizer more acidic, which prevents it from decaying and fermenting into gas. Before phosphoric acid was added in the manufacturing process, containers of fish emulsion were known to burst from fermentation. Because the amount of added phosphoric acid is so small (less than one percent by weight), the product is still considered organic.