Adam writes
Hello everyone

I am minded to try gardening organically in my new garden. If I'm brutally
honest, I'm not sure I completely know why I want to do so, but if nothing
else it sounds like a challenge. I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on
the pros and cons of organic gardening.

Pros - 1) less hassle. You're not having to remember to apply
fertilisers and sprays at intervals during the year.

2) a garden which steadily grows richer in wildlife, which is a joy to
explore

Cons - 1) you need to be prepared to tolerate a certain level of pest
damage - for example, your roses will attract greenfly, which will then
be food for small birds who will be attracted to your garden and kill
further insects. But if can't tolerate the initial greenfly for a few
days, then organic gardening isn't for you.

2) you need patience. If your garden has been tended with a lot of
pesticides, you won;t have much of a wild population. The plant eating
insects will move in first, and it'll take longer to attract the
predators. You'll see steady improvements over 5 years, but the first
year may be depressing.

Now I'm not planning to be a complete organic fascist. If some problem
arises which is a bugger to solve by organic methods but can be easily
solved by some nice little spray of something decidedly non-organic, then
I'll probably make an exception.

That's a mistake. You'll take out the predators as well as the pest and
be back to square one. Glyphosate for persistent weeds is probably OK, a
systemic pesticide for your scle insect wilkl have longer lasting
effects.

I think I may have hit my first such problem, namely keeping the weeds in my
lawn under control.

Consider why you need to do this. A mixed lawn of daisies, self heal,
bedstraw etc is a joy (I agree dandelion are not the most attractive).
If you want a lawn which is purely grass, then you will find this
difficult to achieve organically.


--
Kay