Published: May 07, 2008 06:24 pm            

As gardening becomes more organic, it gets easier being green

Proponents say method most eco-friendly way to feed world, preserve the planet

TERRE HAUTE — Manure happens.

But among organic gardeners, its popularity is growing.

The so-called “green revolution” might not yet be widespread in American agriculture, but it’s gaining ground, one plot of land at a time. And proponents of organic growing in general and gardening in particular say it’s the most eco-friendly way to not only help feed the world but to preserve the planet for future generations.

Organic growing has become big business. And big business has gone organic. From organically grown tomatoes to T-shirts made with organic cotton blended with polyester made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles (get yours at WalMart.com), Earth-friendly products are quickly becoming mainstream.

Constance Ferry, owner, grower, teacher and herbalist of Hobbit Gardens Erth Gathering Center in Fillmore, has been living green for the better part of the past three decades.

“I moved to Indiana 30 years ago and started growing vegetables organically, and started growing herbs to repel and attract insects to the garden, and it grew from there …” she said. “… the first probably 20 years, I probably was one of the very few in Indiana of organic growers. There were some organic gardeners, there was Indiana Organic Growers Association, it’s now the Indiana Organic Gardeners Association, IOGA, but it was basically families who grew organically and get together on Saturdays and have a meal and see each others’ farms or gardens, but it’s grown into a good organization, a lot larger than it was … but I would say the biggest increase has been in the last five years.”

While environmental consciousness has been on the rise, leading to an increased interest in both what’s best for the environment in general and food in particular, regulations concerning what’s “organic” and what isn’t have been taking shape over the past two decades. In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act (USC Title 7, Chapter 94), defining what can be called organic, as well as agricultural methods and materials that are allowed or prohibited in the creation of organic products.

But organic growing is more than just not using manmade chemicals or getting rid of any chemical residue in the soil, air or water. A major concern is replenishing the nutrients that the growing process takes from the land.“It’s not based on [inorganic] residue,” Ferry said, “because if it was based on residue, then no one would be considered organic, because basically it’s a very rare place anymore that you will not have some from our water or our air, some kind of drift or fertilizer or pesticide, mostly pesticide or herbicide. It’s based on the history of the land. If you’re a gardener and you know that no one has used any [chemicals], you have to wait three years, of no using of any chemical fertilizers or pesticides or herbicides on land before it can be considered for certification.

“… That’s the basis you start from. Basically, the law was passed as a method of growing, the method in which you grow. Yes, you don’t use any chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, any chemicals at all, but also it’s how you grow your soil, the inputs you put into your soil, the inputs you put into your plants … You’re growing your soil to grow your plants.”

And, Ferry said, the public had a lot to say when the federal government stepped in to regulate what constituted “organic” growing. And the government had a lot to say about what “organic” is and isn’t. Federal guidelines for the National Organic Program can be found at www.ams.usda.gov/NOP.

“The response to the 1990 act and then the regulations to be put forth was the largest response the FDA has ever received in its history, when they started saying what would be allowed and what would be not allowed and considered organic or considered not,” Ferry said. “It took 10 years to actually get the law implemented. It was a long process, because people who had been organic growers and gardeners and producers and farmers up to that point, there were things that the government or the organizing body would’ve allowed in that the gardeners, growers, farmers, producers said ‘no.’ So it was a really long process to get to where we are today.”

But while it might seem intimidating to sift through federal regulations stating that “any agricultural product that is sold, labeled, or represented as ‘100 percent organic,’ ‘organic,’ or ‘made with organic (specified ingredients or food group(s))’ must be: (a) Produced in accordance with the requirements specified in Sec. 205.101 or Secs. 205.202 through 205.207 or Secs. 205.236 through 205.239 and all other applicable requirements of part 205…,” etc., unless you plan to have a large-scale commercial operation, you don’t have to be a legal expert to have an organic green thumb.

But some legal experts just like organic gardening anyway. Terre Haute attorney Chris Gambill is one of them.

“As a practical matter, I’ve probably done nothing other than organic gardening for … 30 years, but it wasn’t particularly thought of [as organic],” Gambill said. “What I’m saying is I basically garden without using chemical fertilizers, but it was just how you did things. There wasn’t any particular moniker attached to doing that. And I think I’ve used chemical fertilizers … one time in those 30 years.

“… I grew up in a household that, we had a family garden. … I spent my whole life around gardens,” Gambill said. “It was just kind of like one of those things you did, kind of like mowing the grass and taking the trash out. And so when my wife and I got married, we had very little money. We were both 20 years old, in Bloomington, and we saw an advertisement for garden plots. Family Student Council, which was sort of a quasi-student government association for married student housing, rented out these little plots. Well, the first year we rented three and planted by a Coleman lantern that year, because she was working days and the only time we could get out was at night, and I have never not had a garden since that time … in the summer of 1978.

“And I taught gardening, there’s a place in Bloomington called Hilltop Gardens, which was a program, still in existence, for teaching children about gardening. You kinda have two different types of folks: You’ve got folks that go to the university and learn about botany and biology and gardening from an academic perspective, and then you have folks like me who came from rural areas that it was just something you did …

“It’s kind of like the folks that you meet who are natural musicians who’ve been playing things … they don’t think it’s any big deal because they’ve been doing it, [and] that’s just something you do. Well, gardening was never anything I thought was too big a deal ’cause it was just something we always did.”

And for Gambill, using natural means of fertilizing and growing things in the garden came, well, naturally.

“You compost … Who could afford pesticides?” he said. “It was more of a practical [thing], y’know, it was just sort of necessity you did it organically, what is considered organically, because you’re not using any herbicides, you’re not using any pesticides. Your fertilizer is composting. Taking the compost out was just a regular chore .… Some of the things that you do, you work your fall leaves, you work ’em in the garden. You take your grass clippings and you use them for mulch around your tomato plants. Those are just sort of things [that] were nothing that you went and read from a book; it was something you just learned to do. And then today that’s known as organic gardening.”

For more information on nurturing your own organic green thumb, contact the Indiana Organic Gardeners Association at www.gardeningnaturally.org.

        

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