You do not have to be a certified Organic Grower to grow and enjoy good homegrown vegetables. Just follow sustainable growing practices, which would include following a good crop rotation, the use of compost/manure as well as using green cover crops. The most important thing to remember and practice is to maintain good soil.

Manuring or the provision of plant food is an absolute necessity if you want to grow any sort of crop in your garden. Without it, you will not be able to get good results in your garden over any sort of period of time. Not feeding your soil would be the same as not feeding your self and expect to have energy to live your day-to-day life.

To have a healthy soil you must incorporated some form of organic matter on a regular bases. Sure, you can use artificial fertilizers but really, these are the same as taking some form of stimulation food like sugar or caffeine; you get a sugar rush or burst of energy and then you feel flat again. It is the same with plants. Give you plants artificial manure and they will have a growth spurt and then flag. What you are left with is soft growth that cannot produce any thing in the way of fruit and you must then give the plant another dose. Far wiser to feed your soil and always have good result.

To have a good soil that will grow you good vegetables year on year all you need do is add compost or farmyard manure, these natural substances not only feed the plants but, as they decay, they increase the store of humus and that is the very essence of fertility in your garden.

For it is fertility that binds your soil together, but at the same time leaves the soil porous so that air is freely admitted and water can percolate through it. A fertile soil is also warmer and will retain moisture far longer then an unfertile soil.

Farmyard manure and compost also contains millions and billions of bacteria that play a very important part in the action of realizing plant food to your crop.

When you have natural farmyard manures, it is best to apply to the land in the fall at the rate of one barrow load to every ten square yards. Horse manure is better for heavy land while cow and pig manures are best suited to light land.

The massage here is that you cannot run your garden with little or no manure/compost. Humus must be provided otherwise eventually the soil will show definite signs of weakness and your crops will consequently suffer.