You don’t have to grow organic, but we can’t deny it’s a beautiful thing when the plants you love just love you right back. Planet Natural Garden Supply has developed this guide to answer your biggest gardening questions, no matter how you choose to tend your harvest. Enjoy!

Why Bother Growing Organic?

What’s all the fuss about organic produce? When you see it stacked and misted on in the produce section, it all looks about the same. I never understood the hype.

Then one day, a box full of fresh-from-the-farm veggies was loaded into my arms. An organic farm just 30 minutes away from my door was selling shares of their crops, and I signed up for a weekly delivery. I didn’t realize I’d stepped into the flourishing world of Community Supported Agriculture that’s changing the face of farming today.

But my taste buds weren’t interested in a movement. They were hooked on the taste. I couldn’t believe the flavor bursting from mild-mannered zucchini and lowly carrots. The stuff languishing in the store just couldn’t compare.

Why hadn’t anyone told me that food โ€“ vegetables, for crying out loud! โ€“ could be this fabulous?

The next summer, I had to see if I could conjure this garden magic myself. Thanks to the internet, I was able to find an organic gardening storeย that had everything I needed: GMO-free seeds, natural fertilizers and soil-boosters, and a whole slew of organic products for pest control, including ladybugs.

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I planted, I watered, I tended and I weeded.

I rejoiced in my first radish. I prayed for rain. I cursed the rabbits who thought I’d planted a smorgasbord for their benefit.

As the months passed, this experiment became a labor of love, and not just for love of great food. I began to see how gardening chemical-free was also helping me heal my corner of the world.

Instead of fighting weeds and insects, I was choosing another way. I gave nature a little boost, and she helped my plants become strong and luscious. (Yes, I said luscious.)

No more chemicals to wash into the groundwater. No more pesticides that endanger honeybees and birds.

Today, even years after my first revelation of real food from a local garden, I am still amazed. There is nothing like the sweet crunch of a carrot freshly pulled from the earth, served only with a splash of cold water.

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