The term "organic gardening" or "organic farming" was coined by J. I. Rodale in the early 1940's but did not really get too popular until the late 1950's, early 1960's. Sythetic fertilzers were available in the early 1900's but generally were so expensive no one could afford them and most of that generation of farmers were raised on integrated farms, animals and crops, so manure was readily available. For many farms until after WWII horses were necessary to do the plowing since tractors were quite expensive too and many farms did not convert to machinery until after WWII when production reduced costs enough adn a whole new generation of farmers appeared that did not want to work as hard as their fathers did.
I can remember when the conversion of farms started to happen in the 1950's. That is not to say many farms did not convert from animals to machinery earlier. During WWII also fertilizers were not very readily available because the ingredients to make them were needed to make ammuniton for the war.

Wow, yer old gandle! :o) I used to go to my Great Grandmother's farm... she had no running water nor electricity.... and I figger that her corn, which was twice as tall as her (she was 4'10) was all organic. We have pics of her husband at work, using over 100 draft horses to pull the huge combine (?) the thing that harvested wheat. Over a HUGE farm... the neighbors would all contribute horses. And I know, around the turn of the century, those huge farms were 'organic'.... they were beautiful pictures and the plants were all healthy....
Oh, and he died at 92 over his water pump.... all that organic living kept him strong.

Yeah, the term "organic" was never generally applied to gardening or farming because it wasn't needed before the chemical addiction took root. It was just the normal way of doing things.

That's why I always look for old farming or gardening books when I'm in used book stores.

Wayne

wow, it is so cool to be able to read and with such an old and wise person about gardening. awesome ;)

Gandle thanks - it's heartening to be reminded of those times. Gardening without chemicals is a whole lot more interesting.
Sometimes when I talk to people about organic gardening they'll say 'that's what my grandparents did, without the fancy name'. But I disagree. It wasn't organic gardening then because it lacked the organic principle, in the absence of which anything goes. A local mining operation here shut down in the forties, leaving behind bags of nitrate explosives, which a few farmers started using on their fields for fertilizer. Had they been aware of organic principles they would have thought twice and then not have. Same with using old motor oil to keep the weeds out of the carrots. Or arsenate of lead to kill bugs. The knowledge and philosophy of organic farming makes the difference.

Yes, economy and 'organic' used to and sometimes still do intersect. I know a Kansas wheat farmer who doesn't fertilize because he finds 55 bushels an acre without chem-fert cost beats 75 bushels with. He doesn't use herbicides because it's cheaper to run a guy around on the tractor at $8 an hour, and with 400 acres just practical.

But he (nor anybody else in the county if not the state)doesn't give a hoot about organic, and if any of those equations changed he'd lay on the chemicals. Right on that 30 feet of topsoil.

I'm wondering which we're losing faster, the knowledge of how to do things organically or the topsoil lost because agriculture has chosen a self-destructive path.

Wayne