Organic Vegetable Garden.
65ORGANIC VEGETABLES
Some time over the last 30 years someone must have said that they had had enough of supermarket fruit and vegetables and decided that the time was right to go back to mother nature and grow vegetables the organic way.
For years gardeners have been growing organically grown vegetables, either in their own garden in a raised vegetable bed or in an allotment that they look after. Organic vegetables are nothing special there is no magic potion that has been added, it is just a seed planted and left to grow under its own steam.
The soil in which it has been planted may have had some compost added or something to enrich the soil with more nutrients,but basically it is just well rotted down soil that has had no chemicals added to it.
Supermarkets on the other hand have had a big say in the way food as been produced, constantly forcing farmers to get more from their land. Using pesticides to kill off most diseases has had a dramatic effect not only on the land and soil, but on the vegetables themselves.
INTENSIVE FARMING
Intensive farming has it as become known has given the country more food but at what cost. Producing more food has helped to keep costs down, but what about the quality. European directives have been given and must be followed, a straight banana, a tomato that must be this size and shape and must be this shade of red.
Go to any allotment and look at the tomato's there are, mis-shaped ones, green on one side, slightly odd looking shapes. These are natural and how home grown food should look. This year we have grown some carrots, tomatoes, spring onions and runner beans and they all look far different to the ones in any supermarket.
Slightly smaller, but that may be the variety we have grown, knobbly, crooked and bent, but the taste is sweet and succulent. What did I do wrong, nothing , I just let nature take its course, added some organic matter to the soil bed and left it. Try growing some vegetables this winter, or wait till next summer you will be amazed at the difference.
Organically grown vegetables are the future- we must get back to the ways where food tasted like food. Having a runner bean that isn't 8" long, 2 cm wide and mid green with no defects will not kill you. The growth of organic food has even been seized upon by the supermarkets themselves! can you believe that and wait, they want you to pay a premium for getting a bent carrot that still has soil on it. You couldn't make it up. Really they will be selling organic soil soon at grossly inflated prices.
Start growing small amounts now, get the kids involved, they love to watch seedlings sprouting up through the soil. If your neighbour is growing some, ask him to swap some of your beans for his tomatoes, that way you can double the amount that you have. Once you up and running with a small box or a piece of your garden you will not look back.
Start off by keeping a compost bin, throw in it any of your old vegetables, potato peelings, anything that will rot down. Then has this turns into a soil type fertilizer add it to the garden, just dig it in where the veg are to be planted. Organic vegetables will taste all the better from now on.
Enjoy your gardening, organically.
