An organic gardener all my life, my way of gardening, until recently, was considered "out there." I’ve had a few pitfalls along the way, but I've found turning to chemicals for a season was not the way to go.
Science is catching up to the organic way; research is showing that gardening is better without chemicals, or at least very few in small amounts, the opposite of what was touted for years—better living through chemistry. I feel vindicated. Not that I need validation; I am refraining from saying "I told you so," to a few obnoxious “chemical” gardeners. I'm trying not to be smug about it, especially after years of defending my conviction that less is more.
The bottom line: I never found chemicals to work for other gardeners. I watched them use an arsenal of products; nevertheless, they always appeared to need to fix one major problem after another. My observation over the last 30 years is that these products destroy the balance in a garden. It really became apparent to me just how unbalanced a garden on chemicals is when we moved into our home. The previous owner used them on a desolate tract of lawn and sickly roses. It took a few years to return the property to a beneficial insect-friendly place, while I worked on building up a healthy soil base. Each year the garden became better as its addiction to pesticides, herbicides and fungicides lessened. As a healthy balance became the norm, I witnessed fewer problems in my garden.
At this time, we don’t know the entire story about what chemicals do to the symbiotic relationships of the soil critters hiding beneath our feet. Neither do we know how it affects the food chain, starting at the tiniest microbe and working its way up. I’ve said for years, for healthy plants, build healthy soil. These days I feel like celebrating the many gardeners learning to take care of their earth. We need some good slogans, such as, feed the soil and get off the chem-go-round.
I heard a lecture recently and shuddered when the speaker answered a question proudly, “I don’t know, I am
a chemical man,” A member of the audience had asked how to take care of her roses with organic alternatives. The speaker loved roses, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, he grew roses that needed propped up with an arsenal of chemicals from fertilizers to many “sprayicides.” He claims to have the healthiest roses, but are they really healthy? You wouldn’t call a person healthy, if he or she has to take medicines to stay that way. Why would anyone say a rose is healthy when it constantly needs something to fight off diseases and pests? He invited us to come to his rose garden, but I don’t really have the desire to walk in a garden that is laden with so many poisons. I love beautiful roses, but not that much. Give me a rose with a little black spot or bug bites on its leaves; at least it’s safer to stick your nose down inside the flower. But the best way is to grow roses that don’t need the man-made arsenal to thrive.
Rose breeders that hybridize plants that can’t live without chemicals should be ashamed of the work they do. They breed them and then foist them onto the public with a long list of things to do to keep the shrubs healthy. I don’t think there is any other genus of shrubs that has been hybridized to be ugly and susceptible to so many maladies. A good breeder should be selecting for disease resistance, as well as for beauty of the flower. In addition, why are they continually breeding those awful looking shrubs they call tea roses? More importantly, why do gardeners grow them? There are many beautiful roses that we can grow without these ugly weaklings that people actually pay money for.
Here’s a great article to read from Oregon State University: Bank on beneficial beetles to reduce pesticide use in the garden.
If you want to know more about what goes on in the earth below us, read Roots Demystified by Robert Kourik. Read my review.
Keep it up great gardeners; my hat is off to those of you going green.
Sometimes you stumble upon something that just brings a warm smile to your lips. That’s what this simple rustic greenhouse, made out of mostly recycled materials, did for me. This building was constructed by Sam Agnew of Sam’s Workshop in Port Orchard, Washington, who builds them for his clients. Having built my own, I realize that I prefer these charming structures to the purchased manufactured, cookie cutter, aluminum style greenhouses, which are void of personality. Even better is the character that seems to magically spring from repurposed pieces artfully crafted into something useful for the garden. What could be more useful in the garden than a greenhouse? 
Windowsills, trays and shelves inside are all made of recycled wood.
