I think the variety of vegetable/fruit you grow has more to do with the flavor of what you're growing being a major improvement over the organic/non-organic issue. The majority of varieties being developed now put different things far above flavor when selecting traits. Early coloring, thicker skins to tolerate machine harvesting and shipping are right up on the top of the list.
flour like texture is usually a paste tomato trait, but unripened gassed commercial tomatoes happen for sure. But grow a good variety and let it vine ripen, gotta be an improvement ;-)
bitter aftertaste is a trait of some varieties, Elberta in particular fully juicy tree ripened.
There are sooo many different kinds and flavors of potatoes with textures which vary from dry and fluffy to moist and waxy. Unfortunately, there are some which just don't measure up, although I'm sure that growing conditions from garden to garden, season to season affect the final product, but some are consistently nasty and don't understand why they continue growing them.
Oh my, there are so many wonderful varieties that cannot compare ..but that's mostly a factor of variety.
A lot of the tomato varieties grown are hybrids. Plants which come up from the seed of hybrids, are not likely going to be like the fruit they came from, they usually revert to earlier types used to produce the predictable hybrid. One might have been a cherry, the other a large tomato. One never knows ;-) Can't predict what you'll get. You may even get one similar to the hybrid type.
Tomatoes don't naturally hybridize as many plants, but it's possible, and volunteers could be a hybrid, with poorer or better traits than the parents. It's all a crap shoot ;-)
Growing a garden is a wonderful thing, be it 100% organic, or using a little commercial fertilizer here and there along with the high fiber organic matter, until it all gets going... as long as it doesn't turn into a mimic to a commercial production.. but even then if they let things ripen fully before picking.. they gotta taste better than anything you can buy from a store that doesn't buy local produce!
BTW.. my comments aren't criticism, or argument.. just thought I'd mention that varieties make a lot of difference! ;-)
Amen. Home gardeners, 'organic' or non-, have a vast selection of varieties to choose from, while commercial production is limited as above. The only fair Taste Test would have to be between the same variety grown in the same place with the same weather, care, etc., and the only difference being the use of 'chemical' fertilizers vs. 'organic' ones.
Frogleg wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I wish I'd thought of this a bit earlier since I intend to keep chooks at some stage - perhaps sooner rather than later!
I just googled for chicken tractor and found not very much that's very useful ... do you have any good links regarding building tractors and capacity ? - I'm hoping to keep 20 birds of laying/slaughtering size plus the same again of chicks.
Actually, I know it's getting off-topic now but any good sites on raising chickens for home consumption would be good.
That's still being investigated. It's been claimed that our bodies don't absorb nutrients from pills the same way they absorb nutrients from food. I've seen many organic advocates make the same claim about plants.
One factor rarely included in the cost/benefits analysis is the problem of possibly running out of fossil fuels(which is where many of the chemicals come from). It's kind of hard to establish a value for that, but it might be important somewhere down the road.
I don't know about chick tractors other than they vary from ones people just put out for the day, roof and wire, and just move them across green areas for the birds to eat, to buildings with wheels and can be moved with runs and building.
I just thought I'd mention that 20 chickens can produce enough heat to keep each other warm in winter if housed in a building that's not too large and which is well insulated - for protection not only from the cold, but from the summer heat. I didn't lose any from winter cold, but summer heat killed all the buff orpingtons as they are heavily feathered. Just make sure you cover that insulation 100% .. chickens think it's cotton candy!
Another thing about chemical fertilizers is they only provide what is put in the bag, what "science" has decided what plants need. Just like when we buy vitamins, there are only certain vitamins and minerals added, only those that "science" has decided we need.
Relying only on chemical amendments and chemical vitamins might be ok, but there may be some essential trace minerals that we do not know about yet, so it's still a good idea even if you use chemical fertilizers and vitamins to "feed" your land and yourself with a wide variety of nutritional sources.
There are people who say chemical fertilizers are the devil incarnate, and would not use them no matter what, and others who aren't that hard line. I figure that if you are trying to get a compost to heat and you don't happen to have or don't want to use blood meal, some chemical nitrogen won't end the world as we know it if you toss a handful in now and then. But, I wouldn't run out and buy some today, but I'd probably use it up if I already had some.
If my garden is deficient of boron.. I think it was epsom salts you can spray on it .. those crystals you can soak your sore tired feet in, or take as a laxative. They're boxed or bagged up, but they've been around forever. Chemical or organic? Or they mined crystals, or artificially "induced" to crystal? Does the ground care?
The main thing wrong with using chemical fertilizers other than their limiting factors, is they seemingly burn the organic matter from the soil! Or maybe it's just that it doesn't add any, and it builds up salts in the soil, which will soon ruin your soil. If there is lots organic matter used, it buffers those salts, water etc.
If you need to use the chemical fertilizers, use LOTS of organic matter too.
I'm sorry I can't be of more help. I saw the idea in, I believe, an old gardening mag, and it looked like a nifty idea. Some sort of easily movable, enclosed shelter with exercise yard. Here's one reference I Googled:
I'm a skeptic. As to people not absorbing vitamins in pills, I am
*extremely* dubious that the entire world medical community has been hoodwinked for a century. Similarly *I've seen organic advocates...claim" butters no parsnips for me.
I would be very interested in a *respectable* -- i.e., non advocacy -- reference to the chemical composition/nutrients in an average load of cow manure. Yes, manure is good. But is it guaranteed to be the ideal, totally balanced fertilizer? In fact, since someone was unwise enough to mention selenium as an essential mineral, I scurried around and found that it's exclusively drawn from the soil, and if there's a selenium deficiency in dirt (and fodder), animals don't manufacture it.
As for science not having discovered all the vitamins and minerals essential to life, this is possible. However, I'm pretty happy with the ones they *have* discovered and analyzed, as well as having recognized the diseases/conditions caused by well-known deficiencies. "Science" discovered the connection between iodine and various thyroid conditions. You can use as much cow poo as you choose to nourish veg, but if you and your cows live in an iodine-deficient area, it's not going to help that goiter, which used to be quite common before "science" added iodine to salt.
Also, it comes loaded with worming gunk, so you have to let it stand for a while to break it down, unless you want to kill your worms (soil ones that is). {:-).
"The Watcher" >You're advising the previous poster to spend a couple of days a week
There is also the issue of trace chemicals in the commercial fertilizers that build up over time and harm the plants. I understand that a whole lot of formerly very fertile land is now barely usable.
Of course, there is no doubt that the bulk organic matter of soil needs to be maintained. If the soil sees only chemical fertilizers, but no horse pucky or grass clippings or whatever, it's going to lose go downhill.
don' snipped-for-privacy@there.com (The Watcher) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.ritternet.com:
Well, yes, the problem of *where* the factory gets the supplies from which the fertiliser is made will certainly be important at some stage. I have no idea of the quantities of fossil fuel actually used to derive the fertiliser but I would expect that the amount of fuel used to provide power to the factories is quite considerable.
The other issue with factory fertiliser is that quite extensive amounts of mining are undertaken to obtain some chemicals - this also is of concern and these points, obviously, could be addressed if only 100% "organic" farming is practised.
I expect that if I, at home, develop my land to a maximum state of fertility (which I am attempting to do by importing chook poo, grass clippings, straw etc) and recycle everything - including composting me when the time comes - then there will be no further degradation. Of course, this also requires that I export nothing at all (including what I shall tactfully call "personal waste"). Of course, all this means that the productivity of land can not possibly *increase* - the best I can hope for is that it will stay the same. If we factor in losses to the air through respiration and losses to the water table through leaching it seems that even using the most radical of recycling isn't going to be enough to even maintain the fertility that I have created.
Since, at this stage, that isn't practical it seems there are only two solutions available:
Import ever-increasing amounts of organic matter from elsewhere. This seems like a good idea until the realisation hits that *this* organic matter has to be grown/harvested/whatever by someone who is facing the problem that I am avoiding.
Use factory fertilisers and accept the environmental damage.
I don't like either option but since it seems inevitable that option 1 leads to option 2 *for somebody* I think it would be far more responsible of me to just accept the need for option 2 and behave in as environmentally friendly manner as I can whilst doing this.
Now, despite my arguments above, I can see that it is easily possible for me to continue importing organic matter since this is material that will otherwise be sent to the local tip. I can also buy whatever additional organic fertilisers are required. This seems to be more expensive (time and currency) than using factory fertilisers and the only reason I would do this, as I tried to say in the original post, is if there are definite (i.e. proven) health and/or taste reasons. By converting just about all of my grass+weed area to vegetable and grain production I think I'm doing more than my fair share of alleviating the landfill waste and I will continue to import and compost what my time and budget allows.
The taste argument has been concluded to my satisfaction (i.e. taste is more a matter of perception and variety than factory fertiliser) but there have been few comments on health. I'm quietly confident that not too many health problems exist directly affecting me or the soil but I am still curious as to whether or not plants fed factory fertiliser have a changed amount of bio-available nutrients.
Janice wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
As I understand it, and I'm willing to be corrected on this, factory fertilisers cause faster degradation of humus by allowing a greater quantity of plants to grow. More plants, of course, leads directly to greater consumption of humus. The other factor, which is present regardless of preferred fertiliser regime, is that of oxygenation. When we till the soil we are introducing vastly increased amounts of oxygen and all the little bugs 'n' stuff just go consumption crazy.
Regarding buildup of salts I understand this to be correct which is why responsible use of fertilisers includes using lime. I'm not sure that humus does act as a buffer since it is pH neutral. It may allow a greater distribution of the salts so that the effect isn't as immediately noticable but an acid build up is unavoidable no matter what fertiliser is used.
Yes, that is what my personal thoughts are and also the recommendation of the book that started this whole thing.
Lime was always mentioned in the garden books.. which is totally inappropriate for my part of the world, as the soils are already alkaline. So, I figure each person should be aware of their soil PH and treat it accordingly. Like I read somewhere that one should not put Oak leaves in the compost bin, because they make it too acidic. That made Me think I should actively seek out oak leaves as my soil is alkaline, and in some areas, like where I'm trying to grow blueberries in areas where all the soil was dug out and a sandy mix of soil and peat moss was mixed and put back into the trenches. I could use some compost that leans to the acidic for that area. It's all relative ;-)
But this is not specific to commercial fertilizers. It is recommeded for farming operations that both soil AND MANURE be regularly monitored to balance nutrients.
You're combining two features here. Chemical fertilizer provides nutrients with little or no organic matter. Composted materials provide organic matter with, usually, not a great deal of nutrition. Animal poo provides nutrients and some organic matter. You have a happier tomato plant with both a soil rich in organic matter AND nutrients, wherever they come from. If all it took was manure, hog waste ponds would fields of corn. Unwise application of chemical fertilizers can 'burn' plants; so can unwise application of chicken manure.
Now I'm going to have to look up how much petroleum it takes to make a packet of MiracleGro. :-) Probably less than transporting a couple of truckloads of manure 20 miles. Encouraging dependence on 'artificial' fertilizer (and petroleum is really 'organic' ultra-compost) is unwise where it's expensive and organic substitutes are readily available. When we run out of oil, it's *not* going to be because we've been using too much commercial fertilizer.
Oh, would that were true! The reality is that many of the bagged (dry granular) fertilizers are industrial by-products from smelting metals.
I did a lot of research into this matter last summer. What I read was enough to convince me. I no longer have the links so you'll have to Google for them yourself. The basic idea is that, when the products left the foundry, they were labeled as 'industrial waste', and EPA regs controlled their disposal and followed the trucks around, leaving a paper trail. Once they were put in 40# bags they were no longer a regulated waste but had become an agricultural product. As a regulated waste they fell under a fairly stern set of laws. As an agricultural product, they fell under laws which basically said that the label on the side had to be truthful, but not necessarily complete. That ended the paper trail and any hope of linking the foundry chemicals with later health effects. Along with the NPK, you can assume you are pouring generous amounts of aluminum and nickle (just two of a long list) onto your soil.
Read a bag of lawn / garden fertilizer sometime. Try to determine the origin of the chemicals inside or even just a full chemical assay. The bag claims an NPK ratio and shows the balance as filler. If ALL the bag contained were the specific chemicals mentioned on the label I would not be nearly so concerned about using it in my garden. However, the list of chemicals in that bag only begins with the NPK assay and continues with another long and unspecified (and thus beyond the reach of informed consent) list.
It's that second list ... the one that isn't printed on the side of the bag that concerns me. Because of it, if I were to use commercial fertilizers, I would not know what witches brew of concentrated chemicals I might be applying to the roots of the food I intended to eat through the winter. While I also do not know the full assay of the compost I make, I have study after study to show me that, so far as any single chemical except carbon and water is concerned, it is a pretty weak mixture. It's strength is in its breadth and the fact that, having come from living things, its chemical composition is primarily the chemicals and ratios of those chemicals that living things have already found useful. They were mixed by The Master Chemist.
I garden organically. I use outside inputs in the form of tree leaves (gathered in the fall from urban curb sides in one busy afternoon, sometimes two), small quantities of greensand and precious little else. I do not add N, P, or K directly to the soil but let the compost heap sort things out. This leads to a nicely buffered soil that has not required any lime in years. Basically, having begun with layers of clay and sand (SE Michigan was anciently lake bottom), I now have what appears to be some really nice potting soil throughout my garden to a depth of over 2 feet (I haven't dug any deeper than that since I started my beds but there was 2 ft. worth of straw and tree leaves in a trench under that 2 ft of soil). The only pesticide I apply is a well-timed shot or two of BT for cabbage loopers and some raw coffee grounds for slugs*. I don't have weak plants so I don't endure much damage. I interplant and just never seem to have large populations of any particular pest.
Organic methods do not forbid the addition of rock powders nor do they forbid the use of outside inputs, such as the tree leaves and grass clippings of neighbors. If in doubt about what chemicals might have been applied to the grass clippings, simply allow the finished compost to season for a year or more. There, problem solved. In an organic soil, nutrients are released at a pretty even pace over the season, so less nutrients are required since less of them go to waste. This is why the initial application of fertilizers to healthy ground results in bumper crops ... they are held in the root zone by the humic compounds until the roots can absorb them. However, failure to maintain the humus levels results in soil that can't hold the nutrients in solution for the plants to take up. That means that increased application levels are needed to maintain acceptable levels of availability ... and farmers are crying the blues over this one as fertilizer expenses go through the roof while yields hold steady or dwindle.
That's how I see the organic / inorganic debate.
Chugga
*I've had the debate over the coffee grounds already. I'm not interested in any level of theoretical argument about why they couldn't possibly work. I know from direct experience that they DO work.
Anonymous wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@notarealserver.com:
OK.
Search term "slag gardening" turned up 3,250 links including this one:
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in which the University of Florida Cooperative Extension Service Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences actually suggest "basic slag" as a source of micro-nutrients for organic gardeners.
Search term "furnace slag chemical composition" turned this up:
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which indicates that more than
90% of slag produced "has been used as an aggregate in Portland cement concrete, asphalt concrete, concrete, asphalt and road bases."
And I also found
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which says much the same thing. The tables in these last two showing the composition of slag makes quite interesting reading.
A search for "smelting waste gardening" and "smelting waste garden" turned up nothing particularly relevent to this discussion. I did note that just about all the sites referred to smelting waste as being a hazardous material. I find it unlikely that environmental protection agencies would allow hazardous waste to just be "lost" and subsequently turn up in agricultural products.
Ummmm ... further reading that I have done indicates that the reason for the bumper crops is because fertiliser speeds up the transition of organic material into humus. Humus contains large amounts of water soluble nutrients whilst organic material (even after composting) does not hold so much.
Absolutely! And that brings me back to the point that made me ask the question regarding factory fertilisers. The emphasis was actually on the need to maintain good levels of organic matter in the soil whilst the point was that factory fertilisers increase yield.
$3.00/pound ? whatever happened to kilograms that replaced the 'pound' (weight) in circa 1970 ? Has Brutus Costello or Honest Johnny been tampering with the systems again ?
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