Good Tasting Food Organic Answers Column August 7, 2024
Food Grown in the Organic Program Tastes Better
There are so many good reasons to have an organic yard and garden, whether you're starting new from scratch or are moving into property that was once treated with chemicals. The organic program offers a method to lock up the toxic residue in the soil, and moving forward, many ways to stimulate the biological activity and have a truly organic garden. The chemical approach uses the synthetic, high nitrogen fertilizers and toxic chemical pesticides - especially when growing food crops and herbs and landscaping - that can literally make you sick.
Food crops taste much better when they are grown organically.
Primarily we want to avoid the toxic stuff. Unhealthy chemicals that may lead to serious problems are not part of the organic program. The natural organic approach avoids hormones, antibiotics, drugs and other toxic chemistry that comes from products such as Roundup, 2,4-D, GMOs, Manage, Chlopyrifos, etc. The organic approach also helps the environment by using products that don't wash away after rains and don’t leach easily through the soil to contaminate the ground water. The toxic chemistry products do wash and leach.
Organic gardening and landscaping is just more enjoyable, and one of the most common reports from gardeners is that the enjoyment of working in the yard and garden is greatly increased. It’s just more fun to realize that you working within Nature’s laws and systems rather than trying to control and override the natural processes. In an organic home, when you're cooking you can walk into the garden to pick the vegetable or herb you need without fear of what it might have been treated with.
The healthy foliage and few pests or disease problems add to the enjoyment
of working in the organic garden
Fewer problems with pests are definitely a benefit. My lectures on natural pest control always start by explaining the most import step in successful pest control – stopping the use of the destructive products and procedures. The high salt synthetic fertilizers and toxic pest control products harm the soil. When the soil is healthy and the beneficial insects and microbes are protected, the number of insect and disease problems drop sharply. Having to treat less often for pests saves time and money.
Water bills drop from 40-50% when the organic program is used. How? Healthy, biologically active soil and plants with lots of mycorrhizal fungus on the roots simply hold water at the right level for a longer period of time. Add mulch on top of that and moisture is retained better, especially in hot weather.
In an organic home, when you're cooking you can walk into the garden to pick the vegetable or herb you need without
fear of what it might have been treated with.
And finally – the taste of food crops is so much better. Taste is harder to prove but here’s a story that explains it well. Several years ago a research project on a pecan orchard in Hamilton, Texas, was done to study what worked better on pecan production – organic or conventional, and which organic program, if any, worked best. Dr. Joe Bradford of the USDA/ARC came up with the idea and was in charge of the project. Bradford used various organic approaches on certain trees and the university recommended control on others. Everyone involved was surprised that the organic pecan production was considerably heavier and everyone was also surprised that the flavor of the organic pecans was superior.
Joe Bradford's organic approach to pecan growing produced better, heavier crops with great flavor
I – on the other hand – was not surprised. Healthy soil makes trace minerals more bio-available to plants, trace minerals help create complex carbohydrates (sugars) and that's where the improved flavor comes from – as well as fewer pest problems.
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