Organics and organic growing,what and why?

The crux of the matter is regulation and the mind-set of those setting the regulations.The basic concept of organic farming goes back to a time before rules other than those of nature,to a time where people understood the order of things.Very unscientific but leaving the science behind and being able to "read the land" and go with natures flow gave us the pure food that is now labeled "organic". The science of agriculture with all its chemicals,advisors and experts has no place in an organic farming world. Commercial farming and mass production of course needs all of this back-up and the added costs in terms of inputs ,disease and lowering of quality.
In Europe after the last war food shortages (which did not go away just because the shooting stopped) meant that almost any bit of ground became a farm,even city dwellers took pride in growing the "tastiest " cabbages or carrots or whatever and "secret" composts were concocted and it was all done without any rules or regulations.But it was not as hapazard as it looked as ,for example, the seeds were all sourced locally and were of varieties which had been grown for generations and were perfectly suited to the surroundings.The composts were not made to a chemical formula,they were made from whatever was to hand and as the ingredients were organic to start with they had a cargo of bacteria already working away at releasing the goodies needed to recycle the nutrients.The words "good husbandry" mean little these times where you can call in an advisor to tell you which pesticide or herbicide that you need to apply after you have buggered things up playing with your chemistry set.Good husbandry means crop rotation,cleanliness ,tending to the condition of the soil and avoiding monoculture as you would avoid catching a naughty social disease.
Lets first take a look at the soil,as this is where its all happening on the veggie front.Unless this has been macerated by machinery and dosed to death with chemicals its composition and texture will vary from one square foot to the next and of course it will vary in the vertical plane as well.Why in God's name would you want to pull a massive plough [plow in American speak Smile ]through this? Forget please modern industrial farming,we are talking organic here.What does mechanical ploughing do ? It turns the soil but it doe's so in a savage and indiscriminate fashion and it puts all your nutrient down deep and puts crappy hungry subsoil up on top.Crappy subsoil with the texture of wet concrete mostly,subsoil that floods and compacts and dries out and gets hard and is a pain in the butt for growing.But it has minerals and trace elements and silica and other goodies so whats to do? As little as possible ,thats what to do,and thats not being lazy.Consider what happened to soil before we gave up catching our food and instead started to grow it in holes in the ground.Worms and bacteria thats what happened.
Now a lot of traffic has traveled over our lovely soil since the last ice age [which helped in its own way] and much of it is compacted not the ideal home for a free range carrot of tender disposition so we have to lend a hand,not interfere,just lend a hand and this where we have to decide to dig or not,or to use a horse-plough just once to open up new ground or to use a powered rotovator.
Why the slow ploughing[if you really have to]? So that you can watch the soil as it turns and see what you have before you bury the good or whatever.While you can see what you are doing you can decide to continue to plough or to leave well enough alone .You can on smaller bits just dig or double dig [or use piggies,more of which later].Double digging may be required where the soil is compacted or has a hard pan,you are aiming for 2 feet or just over half a meter of good soil for your veggies AND YOU ARE NEVER ,EVER GOING TO WALK ON OR DIG OR MESS WITH THIS SOIL AGAIN.EVER.
As far as I can remember it has been shown in laboratory tests that 90-93% or thereabouts of a plants growth can be attributed to photosynthesis so why worry about soil? Well for starters you are growing in the field,not a bloomin test tube and secondly I can't recall any ways of controlling how sunlight works so that leaves us with our soil to work with.That why you must do your very best if you wish to be good at growing veggies.Aim for a soft crumbly black tilt into which you can plunge your arm up to the elbow and as you are never going to walk on the soil again you make the veggie beds just wide enough so that you can reach into the center easily and just long enough so that you don't have to far to walk between chores.I have settled for 20X4 feet as my ideal size.And if you make raised beds then you wont have to bend so much.This of course requires lots of soil to fill up so you will now have to make lots of compost or buy some.This part is up to each person to sort out for themselves.There are many sources of manures and leaves and waste foodstuffs and it is up to you to find them.You will be surprised at how helpful folks in supermarkets ,factories etc can be if you ask nicely about taking away their waste products and if you are not too far from farms many of them will kiss you if you offer to take away the surplus manures.I found one farmer who had mountains of cow dung to give away as he had no use for it and it was taking up space.Another source was a place making timber windows and doors who had to pay to get rid of shavings and sawdust.What about newpaper and cardboard? And you only need the large imports until you get going and have your own compost heaps to top up your veggie beds.
So OK now you are worried about chemicals etc in the imported wastes.Don't. Unless your source are from a toxic dump then all you need to do is wait a while for things to balance out,unless you treat organics as a religion rather than a process of growing food.If you are religious about it then I can't help you.Example.When the dingbat from the Soil Association in my old locality came calling she bemoaned my use of sawdust and shavings as "this was destroying the rain-forest".Aside from the fact that the covers on the timber as delivered to my source all stated"Sustainable etc", was I not preventing tons of stuff going to landfill?[The big covers BTW were great for covering stuff on my car-trailer when going door to door and could be used to cover cars in frosty weather] But here is the crux,is wood organic or not?Are discarded veggies organic or not? is newspaper organic?would you refuse to use Pravda or the Times or the Hindustan? If your material ever lived then it is organic,get a grip on that idea and get on with life.
Most certifying agencies make you to wait 3-4 years before you can sell your produce as organic but personally I think that your ground should be OK after 2 max.for home use and if you consider what might be in the crap from your supermarket then you will probably be happy to eat your own veggies as soon as they are big enough