Organic Gardening-Reclaim Your Food! Part 2

For the introduction to this series, see Part 1.

A lot of organic gardeners differ on whether or not you need to use organic seed to start your organic garden or whether you can just garden organically with regular seeds from the hardware store. The choice is up to you. Here are some tips I use for our family-

If the food is one that has been genetically modified ever in the history of that particular food, I always err on the side of buying organic. These foods include yellow corn (as opposed to white or blue corn), canola, soy, and cotton. Those are the big ones and while chances that the seed you buy will be modified are slim, because of cross contamination between crops, I feel better going with certified organic, rather than further propagating a genetically modified food. As an aside, tomatoes used to be genetically modified, but are not anymore, so it is up to you but I always buy organic for tomatoes as well.
If the seed is the part of the food you usually eat, I would go with organic to start. This would include beans, peas, grains, and nuts, just to name a few. Again, this is my own personal preference.
Root vegetables like potatos, yams, garlic, onions, and carrots usually have a hormone/chemical sprayed on them to keep them from putting out roots and shoots. While you can still get non-organic root vegetables to grow eventually, you will always get better results if you start with organic.