Yeah, but... "home grown" and "organic" are not the same thing. Backing up the thread a bit, we come to 'taste tests' between organic and non-. There's no question that a tomato picked in one's own garden, or a peach from one's (or one's neighbor's) tree is superior to well-travelled produce, whether they've been fertilized with (organic) goat manure or something in a plastic bag.
Great! I'm even more smug now.
Smugger even.
:~)
Steve
Take a look at those two statements. It's *obviously* going to be cheaper (in terms of auto/truck use) to bring home a few bags of commercial/chemical/non-'organic' fertilizer than chase around for and transport manure and compost. If you work in labor costs, cheaper still. I think the limit in this line was 'organic' advice to keep manure in a bucket on an apt. balcony rather than commit the 'crime' of feeding a potted tomato (or rose -- it's been some time) with a little convenient and readily-available Miracle-Gro.
'Organic' is lovely. Recycling waste of all sorts into useful nourishment for plants. It's just not too practical for all gardeners. I *adore* cow manure because it just *looks* so rich and nourishing...in its plastic 40lb bag which I can bring home in the trunk of my (compact) car. Shoveling and transporting *real* manure for a good-sized garden is just not an option. And there's no guarantee it's 'nature's most perfect food' for plants. At least evil 'chemical' fertilizers can be formulated to supply the necessary ingredients for many plants.
On your bicycle? Or on your back? If a restaurant is separating veg scraps from used napkins, emptied ashtrays, and plate-scrapings, the owner is probably saving for his *own* compost pile.
It's your own fault. You introduced the transportation issue. :-) You're advising the previous poster to spend a couple of days a week chasing around to restaurants and race tracks to find and transport large-volume materials to replace a couple of bags of the chemical nutrients plants require?
I don't understand why 'artificial' fertilizers have such vociferous opponents. AFAIK, plants don't care whether their nitrogen and phosphorous comes from cowpats or granules.
The previous poster is looking at real-life issues, and doubtless already uses all the 'organic' processes he can manage. *His* cost/benefit analysis appears to have come down on the side of manufactured fertilizer. Makes sense to me. He's not talking about wholesale DDT spraying, or lowering the water table to keep his golfcourse green.
After a recent car accident, I was offered some settlement for "pain and suffering." While my pain was minor, I replied that I could 'suffer' at Olympic standard. I haven't the self-confidence for competitive smugging. Although I compete as an amateur.
I largely concur. Taste is improved by organic method only on average, and taste depends on many more variables. I am pretty sure a chemical brandywine will taste a lot better than an organic Roma. Likewise, we love our homegrown lettuce because looseleaf lettuce (best tasting, perfect for cut-and-come again, but very perishable) is just a superior green than any heading lettuce (can travel, no taste). Nothing to do with organic.
One of the advantages of organic cultivation is that the balanced soil will reflect, on average, in a better tasting veggie through better health and metabolism of the plant, and better micronutrient profile. This said, I found lettuce or chard grown on straight manure to be worse than lettuce or chard grown in leaf mold with just a bit of manure. I found that wood ash improved the taste of many vegetables in my acid soil. I am sure that lime would work almost as well.
Radishes
store-boughten
Some people are purists :-)
I prefer to eat veggies that don't require the removal of chemicals before eating. Also, whether or not you add ammonium nitrate or whatever to the soil, having good humus in the soil makes for better produce. Also, while the plants themselves don't need much in the way of trace minerals, we need them. You won't find selenium and the like in a bag of chemical fertilizer, but you'll find a variety of minerals in the dairy doo, compost, or whatever you are using.
Ray
knowing
economic
According to my research (to quote Dorothy Ann), the important thing is to have soil that is rich in organic matter. If you want to supplement that with stuff from bags, you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
Chemical insecticides and the like, however, have to be used with care -- if you use them at all.
Ray
That's why we want to buy that bit of property that has a crick running through it. We are pretty well assured of being able to buy the house and about ten acres of surrounding land, but the owner doesn't seem to want to sell us the creek.
Oh well, I can always put in a shallow well and a windmill. It'll add some atmosphere, and go well with the old barn. :-)
Ray
I wuldn't either -- I've paid the premium for truss tomatoes and, while they taste better than the cheap ones, they have nothing on home-grown for flavour. OTOH I can fully believe that a home-grown iceberg lettuce doesn't taste much better than a shop one. A home-grown cos lettuce outshines a shop one, though
-- even when grown under far-from-ideal conditions, ie with me as gardener!
This is where I quarrel with the purists. I don't care for insecticides and I don't use them (except once, in a pot where Japanese beetles were devouring a woodruff plant). I *have* used Bt San Diego to control Colorado potato beetles. In Virginia. :-) *I* don't want to wash stuff off my veg either. But I see a difference in the level of 'sin' between wholesale use of pesticide and a little MiracleGro. That is, I think that fertilizers, perticides, and herbicides should be separate categories, not lumped together as "evil chemicals."
Selenium is found in the soil, and in animal protein, as well as in some veg. If the soil is deficient in a given area, local animal poo and compost will be, too. In which case, the mineral can be applied as...commercial fertilizer!
I think we essentially agree that mad-dog conviction on either side of the organic-chemical Great Divide are wrong-headed. There are too many gray areas in a controversy that is often seen as black&white.
There are many reasons for growing 'organically' or non-. 'Organic' is certainly cuter, and doubles the smugness factor. :-) It's also economical, if you happen to keep animals which produce manure that would otherwise be a disposal problem (see: hog waste pools). But 'organic' evidence seems to include a lot of anecdotal material.
"The balanced soil"? Say, what? "...better health and metabolism of the plant"? "...better micronutrient profile"?
As I wrote in another post, I find the limits of 'organic', um, limiting. I *sure* don't want to eat from a garden that's been covered in Sevin dust, but when I got some early corn from plants encouraged by ammonium nitrate, it tasted pretty good to me.
(Lime *is* 'organic' within the meaning of the act. It's simply pulverized stone/mineral, not the product of some evil manipulation of petroleum.)
More anecdotal material follows.--
I was talking to an old boy a while ago on some allotments some way from ours. It turns out this geezer had had an allotment during the war, and he pointed out the house he used to live in then, and told me that they used to keep a pig in the garden as many people were encouraged to do during the war, and he had the allotment adjacent to his garden. Then he said " We used to throw the pig manure over the garden wall onto the allotment and dig it in later"
Steve
Exactly! Any gardener with an ounce of sense makes use of materials available. I have no experience with pig poo, but an un- (under-) utilized oversupply that is concentrated in 'hog waste ponds' is a big problem for US meat producers. Not to mention their neighbors.
Many 'organic' procedures seem so simple. Don't clog landfills with leaves and lawn trimmings -- compost them if there's space. Pig poo appears to be less desirable than that of strictly vegetarian animals, but it's probably a good thing to put on the garden (in less than million-gallon quantities!). If I could protect them in cold weather, I'd love to have a 'chicken tractor.'
BUT I'm not a criminal if, in the absence of domestic animals and their aftereffects, I choose to buy a plastic bag of commercial fertilizer for my tomatoes and squash.
almost certainly so. when you buy a bag of potassium chloride all you get is K. When you get manure you get a much more distributed profile. Check the soil under your chemically grown corn. It has less or no earthworms. Without earthworms, drainage is worse, root penetration is worse, if you have a sandy soil, water retention is worse. Further, if you analyze it after repeated usage, its micronutrient profile is depleted. Less slugs is the only advantage I am willing to admit.
Got slugs? You need geese... ;-)
I have not read this book, but I have practiced organic gardening on a suburban block with favourable results and I believe organic gardening is viable if approached in the correct manner.
There may be some exceptions for using pesticides, especially on fruit trees with introduced pests that have no natural predators (I.e. That dam cherry slug that attacks my plums, pears and cherry tree) But otherwise, with careful planning and paying attention to 'past season' errors you should find pesticides are not really necessary.
Mr Hopkins is accurate in saying a that large amounts of organic matter are required in the soil. i.e. compost, as Australian soil is generally of poor quality. We should not even double dig our soil , but build compost/raised beds where possible. Chemical fertilizers will not 'fix' the soil. Compost over time, with continued use, will improve soil quality. (if you crop rotate and minimise digging)
But building compost I NOT hard to do and organic matter is not difficult to obtain.(everyone throws it out) Also you won't need 'heaps' of space.
First you need to
You can make 'moveable' compost beds. Try and make your compost 'hot' as it kills weed seeds. When the compost is finished make it a raised bed and plant and start another compost heap.
I collect organic matter for about a month, picking up neighbours trees they have cut, my lawn clippings, weeds etc etc. (anything organic even newspaper) I then go and collect the manure and start up a seriously hot compost.
SO that fixes up your 'soil' issue and now all you have to do is deal with the pests. P.S and if you have to buy soil, while it is slightly more expensive, choose mushroom mulch. It is worth the extra expense. You will have near compost quality soil and it will retain moisture more easily.
To deal with pests in an organic manner takes some planning. And you will get pests all the same. Its the 'how much' damage they do that is the issue VS How much does the pesticide cost/what am I eating it for etc factor.
So now you need a little bit of knowledge on pest behaviour. Pests find their food by either smell or sight. So you want to confuse them. There a many books on 'companion' planting, good pests/bad pests. Repelling pest plants etc etc that can assist with 'keeping' pests at bay. There is so much knowledge in fact that it can get confusing, and you may start thinking, 'Hey I will just SPRAY'.
But I have found with a limited amount of knowledge that a few tricks work well. Don't plant the same vegetables all in a row. Its like a sitting target. The pests see/smell it SO EASILY. Especially the cabbages, cauliflowers, etc (the Brassica family) Garlic works well in most places as a repellent. Set up 'sacrifice Brassica's. The cabbage I plant these at the edge of the bed and they always gets decimated by pests. However, the other Brassica's are usually free to mostly free of snails/slugs.
Introduce a pond and frogs into your backyard to catch the bugs.
We eat anywhere between 20 to 80% of our own food during meals. Probably averaging 60% This is our 2nd summer crop.
I am keeping an online diary of my garden ( nearly 2mth behind at present)
As to the taste test between organic VS non-organic VS home grown.
I eat mostly organic vegetables (seasonal when possible except avocados my addiction) Sometimes, I will admit you don't notice a difference in the foods. And some can seen even 'better' as non-organic. Below are examples that do compare noticeably for me.
Tomatoes non-organic = Pretty dam tasteless. No flavour and a strange flour like texture organic = Still pretty tasteless. Normal tomato texture. home grown = Fantastic.
Peaches non-organic = From what I recall seemed ok organic = Alright, some had a slightly bitter aftertaste. Smaller in size than non-organic home grown = As big as the non-organic, very sweet, no bitter aftertaste
Potatoes
non-organic = Taste floury and weird organic = Taste wonderful home-grown = Taste as good as organic, easier to clean.
Lettuce No difference between any, but is expensive. Home grown lose leaf's very easy to grow.
Capsicum non-organic = Big and watery. Not much taste but twice the size of organic organic = Smaller in size, less watery. Slightly more flavour home grown = Never been very successful.
In all for 'value' non-organic. But how much water has been used to justify that SIZE is my question. However, in saying the home grown tomato's are fantastic I did have some exceptions. These were the seeds that self sprouted from the organic vegetable scraps I fed to my chickens. They were perfect in shape, stayed on the kitchen bench 'ripening up for days longer than other 'variety's and tasted a lot less 'fantastic' than say the Tommy toes. The moral of this is. Even organics grow tomatoes for 'shelf life' and 'appearance's over flavour. Definably grow your own.
Frogleg wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
That was actually one of the points made in the book that I referenced in the original post. The way the author described it makes good sense to me.
I do and I'm looking for ways to increase that still further.
It seems that way at the moment based on the responses I've had.
No, definitely not!
The *huge* amount of grass clippings, equally huge amounts of chook poo and, possibly, a smaller amount of clay are all at least partly focused on reducing water requirements as much as possible.
And my position on *no* factory pesticides remains firm - increased productivity through factory fertilisers is one thing but I haven't seen a cogent argument yet as to why a well managed, mixed crop would need a pesticide.
Thanks to all who responded.
Ivan.
snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com (simy1) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
But if K is all that the soil is lacking in then surely K is all that is needed to be supplied ?
Regarding earthworms, I have my own anecdotal evidence that "less or no earthworms" is not the case in an ornamental garden that has only ever had commercial mulch (from plastic bags!) and factory fertiliser. Referring back to the book that started me on this line of thought, there is a reference to a study that indicates that when factory fertilisers are used properly (i.e. in conjunction with lots of organic matter and a close eye on the pH) there is no loss of earthworms. I would certainly be interested in knowing of any later studies that show differently.
Thanks for the comments.
Ivan.
...snip......
unfortunately in flash and not readable.
yes. in practice, if you garden in the same spot for years, you have to provide everything. Boron (in your case you don't have any, right?), Mg, Fe, Zn, S, and obviously NPK. Organic matter (again, in your case, local organic matter will not provide all micronutrients if the soil is severely depleted).
yes, but still organic matter they can eat, that helped mellow the fertilizer, and a fertilizier that was not too harsh. Give them straight urea (a good thing, if all you need is N) and you will see that they will dissipate.
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