Help with organic farming questions?

Question

Advantages and disadvantages of organic farming?

Describe organic farming techniques:

-Use of animal manure and compost

-Crop Rotation

-Use of nitrogen-fixing crops

-Weeding

-Varying seed planting times

Answer 1

The techniques you list are all self explanatory.

Answer 2

-Use of animal manure and compost: Animal manure can be either used directly as fertilizer or better yet used in the compost pile. The compost is where all organic trash such as leaves, grass clippings, weeds, animal manure, tree limbs (must be chipped up), etc are allowed to broken down, under natural heat, into a form that can be used as fertilizer and a soil conditioner.

-Crop Rotation: Growing a different crop each year on your soil to help control weeds and insects as well as better utilization of plant nutrients. Most recommend a three crop rotation.

-Use of nitrogen-fixing crops: Nitrogen crops are legumes such as clover, alfalfa, and soybeans. They have the ability to use the Nitrogen from the air and, through a bacteria, turn it into a form that can be added to the soil and used by plants. It is important to add legumes into the crop rotation system.

-Weeding: In organic farming weeding must be done without the aid of chemical pesticides. Things that help out here are crop rotation, the use of mulch, manual weeding, etc.

-Varying seed planting times: Not sure where this fits into the organic agriculture any more than standard farming. Varying planting dates will give you harvest at different times, keeping you in fresh produce longer. It can also be an insurance against loosing your whole crop drought or other crop disasters, such as a late Spring or early Fall frost.