There is not just one way, or a single right way to grow a garden or farm. Success in growing and cultivating the land can be achieved with nearly any method, and one’s happiness in their garden should be the most important aspect. For me, years of trial and error and experimentation makes growing things my favorite past time. Even though most of my methods and practices are not…normal, my end result is a plot of land that is beautiful, productive and home to so many cool creatures, and I absolutely love that!
I’ve killed many plants, more than I care to keep track of, so I don’t. I’ve lost my favorite (and most expensive) ornamental tree, but I’ve replaced it with hopefully a better match for the spot. Time will tell, and no matter the tough garden lesson, the joy in growing, learning from the mishaps, and the excitement of the next season makes it all worthwhile.
When I first started gardening in 2008, I was not an “organic” gardener by any means, nor did I care about that. After a couple years, I started growing giant pumpkins and part of that group’s challenge was to do so organically. I learned a wealth of information about how to control both the weed pests and insect and animal pests without synthetic chemicals. Seeing how lush, beautiful, and HUGE these pumpkins could be with organic methods I decided to switch my home garden to synthetic-free management and have never looked back.
While I am not certified organic, I haven’t used synthetic or organic pesticides or herbicides in many years. If my ducks, natural beneficial/predatory insects and wild birds can’t take care of the problem bugs, I pick them off into a soapy water bath, spray with the hose or just remove the problem plant entirely. Any occasional fertilizer application is done so with a certified organic fertilizer. However, that is how I manage my land, and if someone tells me they want to use all the chemicals in the world to get rid of whatever pest ails their garden, I could not care less.
My point being: there is more than one way to peel an orange, and I’m too busy enjoying my orange to argue about my peeling technique, and you should be too. It’s ok to not agree with any of the methods you read about on this page, it is simply what works for me, a feral farmer.
