Ecological farming necessity and features. Organic farming: main features

The topic of organic farming is controversial. Despite this, there are more and more adherents of this method of growing crops every season. And this is not without reason - to obtain maximum yields of environmentally friendly products, you only need to create conditions as close as possible to natural ones, and the plants themselves will grow healthy, strong and resistant to pests.

How can this be achieved?

Secret 1: observe nature

Have you ever wondered why in the forest, even despite a dry or wet summer, plants do not get sick and continue to grow and turn green? And why do you have to constantly fight something in your garden: drought, excessive humidity, pests, diseases?

Take a closer look at nature. Plants, having outlived their life, remain on the ground and, decomposing, provide food to the next plants. At the same time, they are decomposed by special microorganisms, fungi and worms - they eat organic matter and convert it into forms accessible to vegetable crops.

If this is how everything happens in nature, maybe it makes sense to apply this knowledge in practice, in your garden? Tens of thousands of farmers do this, proving by personal example that with the application of the basics of organic farming, work becomes easier, product quality improves, and yields increase.

Secret 2: properly care for the soil

To increase soil fertility and reduce financial and labor costs, you need to properly care for your garden.

To do this, you need to abandon digging up the soil and replace this process by loosening the soil to a depth of 5 to 7 cm. This will be quite enough to plant seeds without disturbing the porous structure of the top layer of soil and without killing beneficial soil microorganisms.

To increase the fertile layer of soil, humus, it is necessary to add organic matter to the soil. This can be tops, grass, leaves, food waste and even weeds.
Organics can be added in several ways. The main ones are: sowing green manure, mulching, creating warm beds, composting and mulching.
This rule should not be neglected, because adding organic matter is the main condition for increasing soil fertility. Think for yourself - after all, if a plant has grown, it means it has accumulated everything necessary for life and growth. chemical elements. Having outlived its life and decomposing naturally, the plant gives away the accumulated elements to the next plants. Thus, organic matter is an ideal complex fertilizer.

Secret 3: populate the soil with mushrooms, worms and microorganisms

Of course, in nature, organic residues accumulate over many years and it is difficult to maintain them in your garden. a short time accumulate the required amount of organic matter. To speed up this process, you can resort to the help of beneficial microorganisms, as well as fungi and worms.

With their help, organic matter decomposes faster, thereby providing plants with balanced nutrition, while at the same time creating food reserves for future plants. In other words, living organisms accelerate the process of increasing soil fertility.

Have you ever wondered why southern black soils are more fertile than northern ones? The fact is that they accumulate a lot of organic compounds and a lot of soil living organisms. Thanks to the warm climate, they live and reproduce throughout the year. This is confirmed by research by scientists who determined that in the south one hectare of chernozem contains an average of 7.5 tons of living soil microorganisms. In the north this figure is four times less.

To propagate beneficial microorganisms in the soil, you can use microbiological preparations such as Vostok EM-1 and Siyanie.

Secret 4: fighting diseases correctly

Not a single season of growing vegetables is complete without the appearance of diseases. In traditional farming, we are accustomed to using chemicals that destroy not only the disease, but also beneficial microorganisms, thereby reducing soil fertility.

Such preparations cannot be used in organic farming. Therefore, the first rule of a farmer is not to fight, but to prevent disease.
To achieve this, a system of crop rotation, mixed planting, autumn mulching and seasonal soil treatment with biological preparations is being introduced.

In ancient times, people lived in complete harmony with nature - they worshiped the Sun and respected the Earth. Biological balance was maintained - chlorophyll-containing plants used solar energy to increase green mass, produce seeds, fruits, wood, etc. Plant foods were eaten by various representatives of the fauna. Herbivores, in turn, served as food for predators. Various bacteria also actively took part in the biological cycle, maintaining the biosphere in working condition.

Scientific and technological progress, aimed at an unlimited increase in everything that can be produced, has caused irreparable harm to agriculture. Farmers were the first to return to natural land care. Gaining popularity every year organic farming in the country.

Digging or loosening in organic farming?

The main difference between traditional tillage and soil cultivation is its deep digging. With the conventional method, a layer of earth about 30 cm thick is removed and turned over, and with the organic method, the soil is loosened in one plane to a depth of 10-15 cm.

Deep (dump) digging disrupts the natural processes that contribute to the formation of the fertile layer:

• representatives of soil fauna die;
• damaged weed roots form new growth points;
• weed seeds enter an environment favorable for germination.

At the same time, the flow of oxygen into the deep layers increases, which at the first stage leads to the formation of a large amount of minerals, ensuring a high yield.

Next, the soil becomes depleted, since the fertile layer does not have time to recover, and a large amount of minerals leads to its compaction. The deep root system of the grasses has been destroyed and can no longer support the already meager layer. The humus part of the earth is washed away and weathered. An alternative to deep digging is loosening, for which a cultivator is used.

At the same time, one cannot thinklessly approach the issue of digging and categorically deny its significance. Clayey and uncultivated soils without deep penetration will not give good harvests, therefore, for heavy and virgin lands, deep autumn digging is mandatory.

The rule remains unchanged - do not turn over the layer of earth, but move it in one plane! The fact is that many worm bugs live at different depths, so those who are used to living on the surface die under a heavy layer, and vice versa.

Methods for natural cultivation of vegetables in organic farming in the country

At organic farming in the country are guided by several principles:

1. Only animal and plant waste is used as fertilizer. For example, before autumn tillage, dry tops and grass are burned, and the resulting ash is dug up. The main organic fertilizers for growing environmentally friendly products are manure, bird droppings and humus. To produce high-quality humus, it is important to lay it correctly. Also use "" – remains of any food products. As a green fertilizer for organic farming in the country apply .

2. Completely abandon herbicides and fungicides. The following come to the aid of gardeners:

• yarrow has a detrimental effect on moths, gall midges and thrips;
• wormwood successfully fights cabbage cutworms, leaf rollers, aphids,;
• chamomile, celandine and nettle have an antiseptic effect;
• sow thistle is an excellent cure for powdery mildew.

3. Plan the planting of vegetables, taking into account the three- or four-year period, as well as the suitable proximity of the plants. In a four-year period, vegetable crops are divided into groups:

• A – green (white and cauliflower cabbage, broccoli, spinach, etc.);
• B – root vegetables (carrots, onions, potatoes, beet, garlic, etc.);
• C – pumpkin and nightshade (except potatoes) – cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, peppers;
• D – legumes.

4. Hybrid varieties are not used, and the seed material is treated with biologically active natural preparations. Extracts and extracts of chamomile, horsetail, garlic, valerian, aloe, etc. are also used for dressing.

5. Be sure to mulch the soil. In nature, the ground is always covered with grass, fallen leaves or pine needles. Green organic matter rots, increasing the layer of humus. Bare soil erodes, moisture quickly evaporates, and the earth becomes compacted.

Suitable for mulching:

• any mown grass (without seeds), straw;
• and humus;
• sawdust, newsprint, cardboard;
• pine needles, cones and crushed tree bark;
• grain husks (wheat, rice, buckwheat);
• drunk tea and coffee.

Grow environmentally friendly crops using organic farming in the country It’s not difficult, but the benefits from it are enormous - your health.

An increasing number of modern summer residents are inclined towards the idea of ​​organic farming. As many believe, it is easier not to fight with nature, but to be friends. Traditional cultivation of soil and growing crops is gradually becoming a thing of the past, giving way to natural ecosystem processes. In order to understand how beneficial organic farming is in the realities of modern life, you need to understand the basics and principles of this approach to cultivating the land.

General concepts

Discussions about how effective and safe this direction in agriculture are continue to this day. However, despite the controversy, the fact remains - the earth is like a sponge that absorbs everything. And the yield in the cultivated area directly depends on how saturated it is with useful microorganisms and substances.

Today, to obtain a bountiful harvest, many people use chemical fertilizers, which negatively affect not only the soil, but also the quality of the crop. Many gardeners have decided to abandon the use of agrochemicals in favor of organic farming.

To put it simply and accessible language, organic farming is the use of natural processes, waste products, phenomena and living organisms that contribute to the development of natural processes in the agricultural system in order to obtain a healthy, rich and high-quality harvest. With the right approach, you can get not only high-quality products grown on your own land, but also save your fortune environment from human intervention.

Principles of the technique

Despite the fact that ecological farming arose in the distant 19th century, summer residents began to use this trend in modern practice relatively recently. After all, such a technique is based on a careful attitude towards nature and the resources it gives to humans. It differs from classical farming in that the direction is based on the preservation of humus and increasing soil fertility in a natural way. The principles of organic farming on which this system is based help to achieve this result:

Moreover, using this farming system in practice, the burden on summer residents is reduced, since in this case cultivating the land and growing cultivated plants ceases to be hard work and routine and becomes pleasure.

Main advantages

This method of cultivating land and growing crops has many adherents. And all because natural organic farming has a number of undeniable advantages, which are as follows:

Where and how sugar beets are grown, sugar content in beets

This method actually has many clear advantages compared to traditional methods of growing produce on the site. Therefore, followers of this idea will like ecological farming.

Main disadvantages

Like any other technique, organic farming, in addition to its advantages, has some disadvantages that must be taken into account before using this system. They are as follows:

As you can see, natural farming has a number of serious disadvantages, which are extremely difficult to combat using natural methods.

Therefore, before choosing this method of growing produce, a summer resident should weigh all the pros and cons, and most importantly, be patient, since this process is very long and unstable.

Garden and vegetable garden for the lazy: organic farming on FORUMHOUSE

A typical summer resident always works hard in his garden. In the spring, he plows or digs up the area, fertilizes the land, and carries out sowing, which includes the constant planting of potatoes. Then all summer long he pulls out weeds, runs to the beds with heavy watering cans, loosens, hills, stepsons... This approach to gardening at FORUMHOUSE is firmly a thing of the past. In this article we will tell you what modern methods used by members of our portal.

RIS Member of FORUMHOUSE

Neighbors at the dacha dig, weed, water, and consider mulching, flat-cutting and narrow beds to be nonsense and nonsense. I don’t want to offend anyone, but gardening like my parents did is very difficult.

Organic farming in the country

Many residents of FORUMHOUSE are the most ardent supporters of the organic farming method, in which the cultivation of fruits occurs in complete harmony with nature, according to the principle “not to remake nature, but to help it.” Strict followers of this method do not use a shovel or hoe, do not remove weeds, and work for several days during the season - the rest of the time they harvest.

Basic principles of organic farming. Supporters of organic farming:

• do not plow or dig up the soil; the maximum that is allowed is to loosen the soil with a Fokin flat cutter to a depth of 5-7 cm.
• never use herbicides. Good agricultural technology is the key to a healthy plant, and in the gardens of famous organists there are no aphids, fungal diseases, or the Colorado potato beetle. And if diseases and pests do appear, they are treated with microbial solutions, folk remedies or biological preparations.
• do not use mineral fertilizers: you can only use compost, rotted manure, mulch, warm beds, etc.
• They try to attract as many earthworms as possible to their site and stimulate the work of soil microorganisms.
• Both beds and paths are actively mulched. Agronomist Nikolai Kurdyumov, the author of the “smart garden” system, says that mulching will not get rid of weeds completely, but it is easier to “pluck out one weed exhausted by the struggle for rooting” than to be on duty with a hoe all the time. But the main purpose of mulch is not even to fight weeds, but to maintain moisture, increase soil fertility and improve its structure.

Adhering to these principles on his site, the summer resident pursues three goals:

1. increase soil fertility (every year it gets better and better);
2. grow extremely healthy and tasty fruits without any chemicals;
3. reduce the time spent working in the beds and make work easier.

Asemenich Member of FORUMHOUSE

But health care on the farm requires exceptional consistency and high technological discipline! And without this it’s better not to start...

Permaculture by Sepp Holzer

Permaculture is a trend in organic farming, which was founded by the famous Austrian naturalist Sepp Holzer along with two friends.

Permaculturologists set themselves the task of creating a vegetable garden that will take care of itself. To do this, they select plants that stimulate each other's growth, do not compete for nutrients in the soil, and repel pests from each other.

Artecology FORUMHOUSE Member

The art of the lazy owner! This is how I would characterize the concept of permaculture as it applies to all of us.

Member of our portal with nickname ShadeXXX using the principles of permaculture, he is trying to revive his plot in the steppes of Kazakhstan. Now there is nothing living on his clay plot except dry, stunted grass and mosquitoes, but he is confident that in a few years there will be a garden and a pond.

Bagel's lazy garden

One of the most famous permaculturists in the post-Soviet space is Boris Bublik. He believes that any work with a hoe or shovel is harmful to the garden: you just need not to disturb nature, or even better, help it by planting suitable plants nearby.

He does not remove weeds, works in the garden only a few days a season, and practically does not care for it. The vegetable garden grows according to the “edible forest” principle, on its own, without human intervention. The photo shows Boris Bublik's vegetable garden.

This is a rather radical approach, and among supporters of organic farming FORUMHOUSE the attitude towards Bagel ambiguous: “he is more of an orator than a scientist.” But this prevents the participants of our portal from successfully using many of the techniques of a permaculturologist. Especially garden tools of his invention (or based on them).

A tool for planting potatoes, or, as the permaculturist himself calls it, a “potato horseradish” is a thick cutting with a nail driven into it to control the depth of the hole. Bagel He plants not whole potatoes, but eyes from the largest tubers.

In the photo below is a “potato horseradish” made by a member of our portal with the nickname Deppert.

Deppert

CHe pressed the cut-out eyes, poked the holes more tightly, threw the sprouted eyes into the holes and stomped them down. All. Planting 4 varieties of potatoes took about an hour of leisurely work with smoke breaks.

Bagel does not sow seeds in the beds in even rows, he considers this pointless. He has about ten portable seeders - one and a half liter plastic bottles with holes in the bottoms. In each seeder there are holes of certain sizes - very small for carrots, larger ones for beets, etc. The gardener randomly scatters seeds over the beds with a seeder, covers them with soil with a rake or a flat cutter - that’s all.

A summer resident should not stand over a garden bed, bent over like a letter “g,” he believes Bagel. He sows large seeds through a long pipe, first making holes with a peg (in the photo this pipe is on the far right).

Another know-how: self-seeding beds. Onions and garlic are not completely harvested in August, the seeds scatter, and in the spring the summer resident, without lifting a finger, has a seeded bed!

Book Bagel became a primer on organic farming for our participant with the nickname Sly Fox. Thanks to this book, the forum member stopped perceiving the dacha as a place of hard labor and shared useful information with all the forum members.

Sly Fox

my main task During the “garden” period, it was possible to escape from the dacha rent by any means. I read it, and I was hooked, so much so that every day, month, year it becomes more and more difficult to get me out of the vegetable garden.

Narrow beds according to Mittlider

Jacob Mittlider - Doctor of Agricultural Sciences. The goal of his system is to get outstanding yields from a small garden without much difficulty. The system is based on two pillars:

1. Narrow ridges and wide passages between them. We talked in detail about this technology, which provides plants with optimal lighting. The beds and passages never change places.

Evgeniy Sedov

When your hands grow from the right place, life is more fun :)

Content

Human health directly depends on nutrition. Eating foods with GMOs or grown with the use of pesticides and fertilizers leads to irreversible consequences for the body. Modern agronomists propose to turn to the experience of our ancestors, to make the basis Agriculture natural farming.

Organic farming - what is it?

Ecological farming differs from traditional soil cultivation by its gentle approach to natural ecosystems existing in nature. The use of pesticides and deep cultivation has become detrimental to the land, reduced fertility, disrupted the natural cycle of substances, and negated the benefits of worms and microorganisms. Eco-farming is based on the awareness of the free interaction between soil, plants, animals, and organic residues, while humans should play the role of a helper, not a pest.

Organic Farming Basics

The principles and basics of organic farming are easy to understand and are as follows:

1. The earth is a living organism, the structure of which should not be disturbed. Intensive cultivation of the arable layer, excessive digging, loosening, mineralization, and other agricultural work are very labor-intensive and lead to large material costs with low efficiency. Natural farming on a farm or garden plot leads to minimal expenses, while allowing you to harvest a good harvest every year.
2. Mulching is the main method to improve soil quality and create favorable conditions for the natural system. Mulch is straw, sawdust, hay, fallen leaves, roots and trimmed weeds - everything that covers the beds on top protects the black soil from excessive evaporation of moisture, erosion and hypothermia.
3. Reasonable feeding, which is designed not to destroy beneficial microbes and fungi that utilize organic matter, but to give them the opportunity to multiply, suppress pathogenic bacteria, fix mineral elements, and process everything that can serve as natural humus.

Agriculture according to Ovsinsky

The initiator of parting with the classical method of digging up a vegetable garden was the Russian scientist I.E. Ovsinsky, author of many scientific works, agronomist by training. Farming according to Ovsinsky is an ideal way to allow the earth to recover itself without interfering with the natural course of nature. As evidence, the innovative breeder in 1899 wrote the work “A New System of Agriculture,” in which he argued for minimal plow intervention in the soil structure, which ensures an environmentally friendly environment and the production of high-quality, safe products.

Organic farming - Kizima method

Galina Kizima can be considered a modern authority on the benefits of organic farming. Having received her PhD degree, the woman seriously took up issues of increasing productivity through the correct approach to soil cultivation practices. Organic farming using the Kizima method has become widespread and is described in books and articles. The basic principle of her garden is the three “don’ts”: don’t weed, don’t dig, don’t water. The author introduced the concept of a “smart” garden bed into use, personal experience proved the effectiveness of her method.

Organic farming - beds

Create conditions for plants in the beds similar to those existing in wildlife, the agricultural technology of natural farming is called upon. The goals of the method: improving the quality and volume of the harvest, preserving natural fertility while saving time and effort. To bring this idea to life, the following are used:

• gentle loosening of the top 5-7 cm of soil in spring and autumn;
• the use of exclusively organic fertilizers in the garden plot, including compost, manure, humus, green manure, as well as microbiological developments;
• biological products, agricultural products that protect plants from pests and diseases.

Organic farming - where to start

The question of when and where to start organic farming is increasingly asked by rural residents and owners of garden plots. The answer is encouraging: transfer your household farming to a completely new system, known as “organic beds,” can be grown at any time of the year, but the most suitable period is considered to be autumn. In practice, the main task of agriculture will be the rapid restoration of the upper fertile layer, the correct selection of protective equipment, maintaining the natural ecosystem, and preserving it in this state through basic actions.

Natural farming in the garden plot - practice

Periodic, deep digging is not acceptable if your goal is organic farming in the country. The desire for perfect soil cultivation spoils the soil, has the opposite effect on it, making it heavy, dry, lifeless, hard as stone. As practice shows, this can be avoided using certain techniques:

• divide the area into small beds, depending on the species composition of the plants that will be planted;
• try to cover the soil with natural, organic materials, since bare soil is unprotected and less fertile;
• Regularly mulch the soil to a depth of at least 10 cm, which will reduce the growth of weeds, protect plants from pests and exposure to ultraviolet radiation, and ensure long-term retention of moisture in the soil.