"Back to Nature" Cotton Burr Compost Question

Does anyone know if "Back to Nature" brand cotton burr compost is derived from genetically modified cotton... ie. btCotton or Roundup Ready Cotton? I have read good reviews about the quality, but cannot determine if it originates from genetically engineered cotton.

I have written the company and have not received a reply and I tend to take their non-response as a "not good thing".... from my perspective, of course. YMMV on the GM thing.

Thanks Charlie

Reply to
Charlie
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According to their WEB site, the compost is 100% organic.

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'm not an expert but I doubt that genetically engineered products are considered organic.

Reply to
The Cook

I'm not convinced. It reads to me like it is 100% organic, as in organic matter.

Even GM crops could be rasied "organically" and their residue could be considered "organic". There is lots of fudging going on in regards to what is truly "organic".

I am not being contentious or even necessarily disagreeing with you, I am just not assured that the cotton used is *not* GM, as so much of the cotton raised now is GM.

And would compost derived from GM crops be a bad thing? I am not sure, but my intent, as far as possible, is to *not* support companies dealing in GM products or use/ingest them myself. Difficult task, yes, unless one can raise every bit of their food, which I cannot do presently, but which is my ultimate goal, though I may never realize this goal.

Care Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

If you wear cotton clothing how can you tell if the cotton is GM? My gentleman friend is a cotton farmer. He is currently growing non-GM (Cobalt Pima is the variety), but you're right - most cotton grown these days *is* GM (per my expert :o)). Sue

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Reply to
Sue

An alternative would be to check for organic mushroom growers in your area. They have a lot of compost to get rid of and either could sell to you or tell you who handles their substrate when they are done with it.

If this is a cultural thing and, it needs to be cotton, please keep us informed.

I have found references to organic cotton (what ever that may mean). You may want to track down the growers.

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

I think the seeds need to be organic.

Reply to
The Cook

Hi Bill,

This isn't a cultural thing, and though I try to amend my soil with nutrients that are organic, sometimes it is very difficult.... bone meal for instance. I just don't want to be using anything on my soil that I can determine originates from GM products.

I am making my own compost, but have limited space and need more than I can produce myself at the present time.

I have found and use mushroom compost. A nearby Sutherland's store carries both mushroom substrate and B to N cotton burr. I like to use a shotgun approach and amend my soil with as many good things as possible.

I just found another address at Back to Nature, from the United States Composting Council (USCC), and am awaiting a reply. I'll keep y'all posted if they reply.... or don't!

Take Care and Thanks for the Reply Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

You cannot, unless it is marketed as such... and can be verified.

Cotton from any of the brand names is likely GM. And from many of the imports as well.... GM is wreaking havoc in other countries and destroying local cultures that depended upon seed saving, etc.

Good for him. And you. And the rest of us!!

BTW, good to hear from you... been a long time since the run-up to Y2K and all the fun we all had on m.s and c.s.y2k! Hell of an education that was. I learned and changed much about my life.

Wonder how old BKS is faring these days? What a dope!

I dropped back in m.s after I read your post and I see many of the oldtimers are still at it... tcmay is irritating the folks even better than he used to do!

Care and Carry On

Charlie (reincarnated...grizzled in that former life.. hope I didn't piss you off back then, though there is a good chance I did!)

Reply to
Charlie

Eating a reasonably varied diet is supposed to be best for people. I'm sure it is for the soil as well. I've been adding grape skins, mushroom compost, and household vegetable scraps to the garden for about four years now and the (originally hard clay) soil is now full of worms and easy to work. I'm hoping that I'll get it into as good a shape as I can, while I am able, so that I can slide on it when I get too old and feeble.

I read on one of the sites that cotton burrs became popular in the South in the 1880's. I didn't know if there was some regional wisdom that went with it.

Today in my garden, I saw one lone bee again. Yet to see multiples. This is the third time that one bee has visited. The butterflies were mugging the valerians and the sage (at least 30 of them). Warm again but we are supposed to start cooling off with rain on wednesday.

With all the weird diseases popping up these days, I just got to feel it is something in the environment that wasn't there before. It took nature billions of years to get it right and we've managed to mess it up in a couple of centuries.

Looking forward to your report.

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

Amen! This is my goal as well. The years are piling on faster and faster and the body is becoming less willing to adapt to the change.

The reviews I have read state it is really good stuff, high in minerals and protein and whatever. The price is pretty good....about four dollars per large bag.

Same situation here with honeybees. A single every now and then....they have been in decline for several years now. I pray the other pollinators fill in and pull us thru. I have a few miner (or similar) bees working on the log with holes I put up and in a wooden chair with some openings that sits out back.

I remember my wife's grandfather working wih hives as recently as 20 years ago, before his death. Honeybees were every where, and many other bee pollinators. Now they aren't.

Yep. Agreed. We seem to be on similar pages. God gave us a perfectly good nest and we managed to totally fill it with S**T, and here we are.

So it goes.

I'll keep you posted!

Care & Carefully Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Wow, what a surprise!! I never participated in c.s.y2k. I'm not sure I even posted on ms before Y2K - I'm old and can't remember things very well - and I think that c.s.y2k was about done right after nothing much happened. I still post a very little on ms. Hardly read any of it. I was never into survivalism and just read it because my gentleman friend (Robert Sturgeon) posted (and still does) there. Had to keep up with him. :o)

I'm afraid that memory thing has me wondering who BKS is.

Oh, yeah. You may have noticed that it's almost all politics now with a whole bunch of racists (new ones from cross posting) and anti-Semites. Yes, Mr May is still the same if not a little nuttier than he was. Were you around for the great exposure? I must humbly admit that it was one of my finest hours on ms. He kill filed me after that.

Grizzled was your name at the time? Um, that memory thing again. I don't remember. I'm sorry.

LOL Despite their best efforts no one on ms ever pissed me off. I swear I was called every name in the book and just loved it. I have never understood why people get so worked up. It's just Usenet. So, I assure you that you never pissed me off. You may have tried but you didn't succeed. :o) If you ever feel like doing some political wrangling come on back to ms. Sue

Reply to
Sue

What do you have to attract the bees? In the front yard we have a Peri Japonica which all the flying things like. Right now we have a

5' x 40' strip of collards which are about 4' tall and full of flowers. There must be 300 bees there and have been for several days.
Reply to
The Cook

The best prospect for bees in our yard at present would have to be the sage, set next to the red valerian, the two plants leap out of their green background. There are a few flowers on the blueberry but the rest of the bee friendly flowers (thyme, oregano, foxglove, peppermint, ect.) really haven't haven't flowered yet. I did have some carpenter bees that showed interest in the blueberry and wisteria a couple of weeks ago. Other than that, the main flower right now comes from the local weed, wild onion.

Collards? As in greens? Hmmm. Looked for a picture of peri japonica from google with no solid hits.

I hope you aren't planning on whacking me up along side of the head and tell me to get it right.

You'll excuse me if I'm a little wary but once bitten by a dog, twice wary. I'm always open to friendly advice:-)

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

I misspelled the name. Here is a link.

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yes, collard greens. The patch is volunteer from the plants we turned under last fall. I think that any of the brassica family will produce lots of yellow flowers if left to go to seed. The bees also like rosemary blossoms.

I would think the more plants you have that attract bees the better. They get used to coming around here and will continue to come when I put out the squash and cucumbers.

My next-door neighbor is talking about setting up some bee hives in our woods that are behind his house. I told him sure, if I can get some of the honey.

Reply to
The Cook

As luck would have it, I have "a Brussel" sprout going to seed. My first brassica experiment didn't work out very well. The Sun drops below the tree line in Dec. and doesn't come back until Feb. There is filtered light but no full Sun. Anyway, no bees around the sprouts.

I have one large bush at present that has lots of flowers. The flowers come in clusters of four, each has four white petals lying in the same plane and the yellow stamen point straight up from the plane of the flowers. The bush is 9' tall, a tangle of canes coming straight out of the ground and, harbors snails. As soon as it finishes flowering, I'll whack it back to 6' tall.

I have an old rosemary but it doesn't have any flowers on it yet. The thyme is the same thing, no flowers.

I kinda had this problem last year when the zuch and the crook-neck first went into flower. The absence of bees was very apparent. The first few fruits shriveled-up and fell off. I tried hand pollinating and, then the bees finally showed up and, life was good again.

Thanks for the feed back. It seems I am constantly studying what I think I need to know and, then I get whacked with something I didn't know I needed to know.

Mercy butercup,

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

Don't we all about all sorts of subjects.

Reply to
The Cook

Man, this has gone seriously off-topic and I apologize to the rest of you for this......but inquiring minds want to know about, or grab a link to, the exposure of tcmay.

I'll behave and go back on topic then.

BTW, for the rest of you following this, I still haven't received a reply from Back to Nature concerning the makeup of the compost. (Did that sorta make it on-topic again ;-)

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Here is the response from Back to Nature re: cotton burr compost containing genetically modified material.

Another good product lost to the Frankencrop industry... IMO.

Care Charlie

____________________________________

In brief, our raw material comes from several gins on the South Plains. What they have, we get. Some cotton is genetically altered. It may ease your concern a bit to learn that in recent years the EPA has decreed that all chemicals used on cotton must be bio-degradable within two weeks. The composting process (4 months at temperatures not exceeding 150 F) effectively eliminates any trace of carbon based chemicals, pathogens, weed seeds and harmful organisms. As members of the United States Compost Council, we regularly submit samples for testing. Our products meet the USCC's standards. Personally, I would be more concerned about the chemicals than whether the cotton has been genetically altered. However, If you are uncomfortable with our product, there is certainly no obligation to use it. We appreciate and understand your concerns. Thanks,

N. Warren Johnson Back To Nature / Garden-Ville Cell: 214-704-7329 Fax: 940-440-0636 Email: nwj972 at/remove/change yahoo.com

Reply to
Charlie

Like the present melanin scandal in pet, poultry and, pork feeds, the use of GMOs makes us all guinea pigs. It it safe? The FDA crosses their fingers. GMOs produce unique proteins as the try to integrate genetic material from different species. What happens when these proteins are devoured by soil organism. What are ramifications when genetic drift occurs? Grown in hermetically sealed greenhouses for research may be justifiable but released to the environment and mainlined into our food source can only be called greed. So what Orwellian brand name do you use for Franken Crops?, "Back to Nature", of course.

Vote with your wallet folks.

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

Almost all of our food is genetically modified, either through selection by agricultural scientists over the past 10 millennia, or through genetic engineering. GMOs may contain modified proteins, but the modifications are planned and controlled. Nature does the same thing constantly and on a completely random basis. If that were not so, the fresh organically grown tomatoes you enjoy would still be toxic, and corn would look like rye grass.

Why be concerned about a *proteins devoured by soil organism*? Once torn down into the basic amino acids, nucleotides etc, GM anything are completely harmless. A given GM protein itself might be of concern as an allergen or toxin, but it is still made from the same 21+ amino acids of which all proteins are made. The FDA didn't just cross their fingers, but even most well educated people can not understand the real issues involved. There are dangers inherent in GM foods, but direct danger to humans who consume them is very much less (several orders of magnitude less) than those posed by pesticides, food processing and preservation procedures already in common practice. The real dangers are far more subtle, such as compensatory mutations in the pests a given GM is meant to help control.

It is certainly a moot debate. The choices for most of the world are really rather straightforward. Eat GM food, starve, or quit breeding. I vote for the latter, but it does not seem likely.

-RT

Reply to
Rick

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