2 Women on 2 Acres

Organic Gardening is very ‘chic’ at present, I think we are all a little fed up with rising food prices and decreasing the quality of our supermarket selections.

Nearly gone, are the days when ‘sliced white plastic’ bread was considered the best invention since the wheel.

We are beginning to understand the impact of chemicals on our environment and we are seeing the effects in the changing weather patterns and its getting a little bit scary.

Organic gardening isn’t new, and there have been many pioneers, whose methods, even today, have stood the test of time, and are practiced as they were. when they were ‘invented’ all those years ago.

I love to read about the methods of gardening I am using and how they came about, it helps me understand just why I’m doing something.

I am truly amazed, when I realise just how old all the methods I am discovering today really are

A Few Pioneers of Organic Gardening

Sir Albert Howard’s (1873 - 1947)
Sir Albert Howard’s legacy to the organic movement was a composting method called ‘The Indore Method’ named after the Indian state in which the Indore method was founded.

Sir Albert was a British agricultural officer who worked in India between 1905 and 1931, he was actually commissioned to teach the Indian people, the sound British principles of successful farming!

But, it was actually the Indian farmers who taught Sir Albert a lesson and one he would never forget!!

A lesson, in rapid composting methods, that have not changed over the years and are still practiced to day by unsuspecting gardeners who may have never heard of Sir Albert Howard, but who, use his methods of building a compost pile.

Louis Bromfield (1896 - 1956)
Louis Bromfield, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a founder of ‘Time ‘ magazine, discovered by growing Alfalfa, you could bring up nutrients, buried deeply beneath the surface of the soil, courtesy of it’s long roots.

And, cutting the alfalfa down and leaving it on top of the soil for a while before turning it under regenerated it so a exhausted soil gradually came to life again.

Simply put, Louis discovered the advantages of green manure and cover crops and how beneficial they are in regenerating nutrient depleted soil. Another practice we use today.

J I Rodale (1898 - 1971)
Mr Rodale was truly, an influential figure in the organic movement, his legacy was to introduce the word ‘Organic’ to the world in 1940 and the Rodale press, which to this day still publishes the ‘Organic Gardening’ magazine.

It was around this time, that he was arguing against the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and trying to tell the world what a devastating effect such continued use would have.

Thank you Mr Rodale, we have just begun to hear your words of wisdom.

Percival Yeomans (1905 - 1984)
Percival Yeomans, brought in the 1940’s a method of farming and tending to that farm land called ’keyline’ farming, which is now widely practiced world wide .

In this style of farming, in the harsh climate of Australia, Yeoman’s devised a system of tending land by non-invasive tilling and creating a rainwater collection system that would sustain the land in a drought.

He also introduced cyclical pasture grazing, sheet composting and tended his land as a huge green manure crop, which would continue to improve and feed the land the longer it was farmed. All of this based upon his own personal experience with tending his land.

Friend Sykes
In 1936, Friend Sykes used a mixture of pastural herbal leys to regenerate his piece of exhausted land in Wiltshire, near Salisbury Plain.

He not only used leys, but rotated dairy cattle, then beef cattle and then sheep over the land on strict rotation.

Using the different eating habits of each animal to help keep the land in peek condition, his leys were on a four year rotation and by rotating the animals in such a way.

He not only had the ley eaten correctly, but had the added bonus of fertilizing the land in a sheet composting kind of way by four different animals.

Friend Sykes is an inspiration to us all, even today, his farming methods and sustainable living principles are not out of place in our chemically damaged world.

So, you can see, Organic gardening is not new, and we need to take heed, as much today, at these words of wisdom, as they did when the words were first spoken, all those years ago. Some thing never change.

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