Am I Organic?

When I say organic, I'm not talking about the smells that come from The Moog here. I mean my approach to allotment gardening. I thought I'd probably be using mostly organic methods, but it's much harder than you might imagine. How organic is organic? How far do I need to go?These are some of the things that have come up lately:

How do I know if my beanpoles are from an ethical source? It doesn't say on the pack, but I can't grow beans without them. I expect my mesh and netting are produced in a plastics factory somewhere too, which uses oil and pollutes the atmosphere. But if I don't use them, the birds will eat my crops.

How do I fertilise my crops if I can't use chemicals? The instructions that came with my garlic bulbs say "spread sulphate of potash around the plants". Well, I've got some sulphate of potash, but it doesn't say "organic" on the label, and I'm pretty sure it looks like the sort of stuff that was produced in some vast chemical plant somewhere. I don't know how it was made, or where, or what from, or what the consequences for the environment were. All I know is that it was £1.59, when the organic fertiliser (which, I hasten to add, made no mention of "potash" at all) was £4.99. I realised in the shop that I don't know enough about fertilisers to choose the right alternative.

How do I keep slugs off if I don't use pellets? HA! I'm winning here. That one I've answered by using nematodes, I hope. I've watered in the special powder and I hope that it'll at least keep the numbers down, even if it doesn't completely remove them. I have used the same stuff at home to good effect. That means I don't have to use the little blue pellets as much, which must be a good thing.

Can I cut out peat completely? I try to buy peat-free compost, but the quality is really variable, it's more expensive and harder to find in the garden centre. If you let it get too dry it's almost impossible to make it soak up water again. Also, I like to use the little peat pots for my seedlings, because they don't need pricking out, you just plant the pot. Surely that's got to be better than using a disposable plastic tray? Which is best, saving the peat bogs, or using less oil to make plastic?

There's a lot of talk about organic gardening, and lots of the old fashioned chemicals have been banned now anyway. So I've decided to do what feels best to me - not what anyone else says. For example; I'll use sulphate of potash until I find out what the right organic alternative is. I'll make my own compost, but I'll burn stuff too. And I'll use peat pots - not because I don't care about peat bogs, but because I've had to spend hours and hours digging bits of old plastic out of my plot; and it really made me think about the amount of plastic that goes to landfill or gets dumped in the environment. If the government ban something I've been using, I'll move to something else; but for now, I'll just use my best judgement.

It's not that easy being green.