What is an organic salad?

Organic salad is grown without the use of artificial pesticides, fertilizers or herbicides. Any kind of salad is qualified, including head lettuce and leaf salad, if grown in soil without chemical products and none of them is added. It cannot also be preserved or treated after harvesting with anything that does not happen in nature. Strict controls ensure that commercial growers meet the necessary requirements to indicate their production as organic.

Many people have decided to grow organic salad in their home gardens, where it is relatively easy to control increments into plants and soil. The same methods will work at home or in commercial operations; The difference between them is the measure of the operation. The soil is fertilized by aging compost, which contains only organic materials, with worms from carefully fed worms or other organic fertilizers. To achieve the best results, the soil should not have any artificial products for three or more years, which in some cases is a requirement for organic Certification.

pest control can be more difficult in some situations because the salad is vulnerable to various types of insect damage, including cabbage attacks, cutworms, aphids and leaf hopper. Since no pesticides are used to grow organic salad, other means to control pests must be found. One method that may have good results is to use predatory insects against harmful, so that their number is reduced to the extent that they cannot cause any serious damage. Adding small trichogram wasps is an effective means of control for many different types of caterpillars and ladybugs work hard to reduce the population of aphids.

Since the application of herbicides is prohibited, weeds are usually checked by more demanding methods. Tractors or cultivation work between the non -neboder lines to minimize weed population, but a certain amount of weeds is inevitable. FosterThe summer invests a lot of time to keep weeds under control until the organic salad is well introduced and can have its own.

Commercial growers of organic salad and other products must keep careful records that show what crops have been grown on every piece of soil and detail at every step of the growing process. Usually it must also be able to prove that the seed they used was organically produced, proving that the chemicals have avoided from the beginning. Government agencies supervise the certification process and only those who meet the requirements can sell their production as a certified organic salad. The exception of this rule is that in some places farmers who have very small farms and limited sales may not be certified for selling environmental products.