What key benefit does organic gardening provide?

Organic gardening promotes soil health and biodiversity, which are essential components for sustainable agricultural practices. This approach emphasizes the use of natural processes and materials to enrich the soil, enhance nutrient availability, and support a diverse ecosystem of plants, microorganisms, and insects. Healthy soil is vital for growing strong plants, as it retains nutrients and moisture better than depleted or heavily treated soils.

In organic gardening, practices such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and composting are used to build organic matter and improve soil fertility. This not only leads to healthier plants but also encourages a broader range of organisms within the soil, contributing to greater biodiversity. Enhanced biodiversity can help improve pest management and disease resistance, leading to a more sustainable gardening approach.

The other choices do not align with the principles of organic gardening. Using synthetic fertilizers undermines soil health by disrupting the natural nutrient cycles, focusing on monoculture planting reduces biodiversity and can make crops more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and decreasing water conservation is contrary to the goals of organic gardening, which often emphasizes practices that promote efficient water use.