Choosing organic versus conventional gardening practices to build healthy soil and control pests and weeds has profound consequences both for your own family’s health and well-being and for the environment.

For example, organic home gardening eliminates the use of conventional pesticides. It’s amazing that on average, homeowners use proportionately three to six times more pesticides in their yards than farmers do on their crops. Most wildlife pest poisonings and most surface-water contamination from pesticides come from single-family homes.¹ Yes, we need to change agribusiness, but starting in our own backyard is at least as important.

Here are some important elements to grow your own healthy garden.

Building Healthy Soil

Working compost (broken-down organic material) into the soil improves soil structure, texture, and aeration, and increases the soil’s water retention capacity. It also promotes soil fertility and stimulates healthy root development. You can buy compost in ready-to-use bags at the local garden supply store or, better yet, have fun making it yourself by recycling garden and kitchen debris at home rather than sending it to the trash or landfill.

A pile of leaves, branches, old roots and weeds, and lawn clippings will eventually decompose slowly as in nature without any special intervention and become fluffy natural compost, the best fertilizer in the world, and without any nasty poisons. You can also speed up this process by layering fresh green plant material, including leafy kitchen waste, with dried organic matter and soil, and then keeping it aerated by turning it periodically. It’s also necessary to keep the composting material sufficiently moist.

To improve the soil in our own garden, my family has enjoyed using a rotating compost bin, which can be found at http://www.compostumbler.com We’ve also had fun raising worms in the back yard with an innovative device called a Can-O-Worms. Find it at http://www.magicworms.com and many other online retailers.

Garden Pests and Diseases

The best defense against destructive pests is biodiversity. Growing many different kinds of plants encourages a variety of beneficial insects to take up residence in your yard, where they can eat the harmful insects and create a balanced ecosystem. If you choose this natural method of controlling lawn and garden pests, you will single-handedly make a significant green impact and protect the health of your children.

You will, furthermore, delight your baby with a close-up look at such beneficial insects as the beautiful ladybug, which eats destructive in­sects that plague gardens. For more solutions, and a list of nontoxic pesticides you can make at home, see “Natural Pest Control” at http://www.eartheasy­.com

Garden Weed Control

Mulching is the best recommendation we can make for reducing the weeds in your garden. Whereas compost is at least partially decomposed and ready to be worked into the soil, mulch is a three-inch layer of organic material—leaves, clippings, even vegetable scraps from the kitchen—that you spread on top of the soil around your plants in spring or fall. Mulch stabilizes soil temperature, prevents weeds, feeds the soil for healthier plants, and helps conserve water.

Of course you can also get down and pull some weeds yourself too.  ....read more