Compost and Organic Soil Amendments Soil Amendments of Organic Gardening

Before the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farmers and gardeners plowed or dug the earth to cultivate plants. Farming contributed to the civilization of mankind because food could be produced and stored near the safety and stability of home rather than by migrating to hunt and gather. Some farmers burned the chaff left on the fields, some manured the ground. Some moved crops to new ground when the crops grew poorly. Food was produced all over the world, interspersed with periods of abundance and famine. On the scientific front, our definition of „organic ‟ and „inorganic ‟ began in 1807 when a Swedish chemist, Jons Jakob Berzelius developed a classification system to divide substances which were obtained from living organisms from substances which were not from living organisms. All living creatures and the substances produced from living things like sugar from sugar cane, olive oil from olives, maple syrup from maple trees were classified as organic. Sand, water, rocks, metals, and salt—virtually everything else in the environment, were classified as inorganic. Chemists used heat to test substances and found that organics could be changed to inorganics when super heated. Inorganic