General purpose insecticide?

[Toni]

"paghat" wrote

I believe I have said this before, but... Paghat-- you rock!

(another one filed away for future reference)

[paghat]

It is hard to escape old patterns of thought. John really believes apple maggot MUST be treated with synthetic pesticides because nothing else works -- it's a claim so many have made so often that just like sasquatch sightings it MUST be true. If he is shown the conclusive studies from Cornell & elsewhere that prove this common lore is false, he'll just come up with yet another pest he believes cannot be controlled except by the same harshest most harmful methods he is predisposed to believe in. He strongly believes in the magical incantation "safe if used as directed" but even he adds so many provisos he clearly knows it's one hell of a big "if."

John has for many years in this group advocated "the right chemical for the right job" -- he's a true believer in the trustworthiness of chemical industry sales pitches. If there's a better organic method, he's not incapable of realizing it, but he's going to fall behind the learning curve. I try always to remember this is the same guy who praised cowshit for "that farmy smell" -- gotta love a guy like that (as for me, I very swiftly learned never to stop for a hitchhiker in bib overalls near a dairy, as the car will smell like cowshit for the rest of the day).

-paghat the ratgirl

[Doug Kanter]

Oops - that was left incomplete. Fixed:

Note: Somewhere on the web, there *is* mention of one round of tests in which an agricultural chemical was tested on humans. Maybe it happened twice, even 3 times. Irrelevant, statistically. There are hundreds of products being sold now.

[lgb]

I'm aware of the dangers inherent in driving my car or riding my motorcycle, too. That doesn't stop me from doing so. Nor of having an almost perfect driving record for 55 years (a couple of speeding tickets).

Your attitude strikes me as fanatical. There are times when pesticides are called for. And different compounds used have greatly varying toxicities.

For example, Sevin, which is quite toxic, is the only thing I've found that will knock out elm beetle grubs before they deleaf my elm trees. I wear coveralls and a respirator when I use it, usually once a year.

Malathion, OTOH, is relatively inoucous and I use it to kill thrips and aphids on my rose bushes and Japanese honeysuckle with short sleeves, no gloves, and no respirator.

I realize this won't convince you, but I wanted to make others aware that not all of us are environmental fanatics or, on the other side, reckless rednecks who spray evrything in sight with the deadliest stuff we can find. So that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

[John Bachman]

Please cite anything I have written about apple maggot. You will fail as I have never written on that subject.

Please cite just one time that I have promoted "the right chemical for the right job." Also, when I said anything about cowshit. You will fail for I have never done either.

Some may praise paghat but she is is off the mark this time and has demeaned me with false accusations. Bad paghat!

John

[paghat]

What convinces me is stories such as you tell of always needing so always using all sorts of toxins for all sorts of garden problems. i never use them, never need them. My elms are healthy, the roses are healthy, the honeysuckles are healthy, never been assaulted by thrips, have gotten rid of aphids with nothing more than a couple drops of dishwashing soap in a gallon of water, sometimes just with the water. Why is that my garden does fabulously & never requires ME to get a respirator, moon suit, & five kinds of toxins to spray about? God loves me but hates you? I'm lucky, you're not? Or are we both experiencing the results of our own actions?

It's quite clear that chemical dependency breeds chemical dependency by throwing gardens completely out of balance. The longer one gardens organically, the better that semblance of natural balance that could never be sustained in a soup of recurring toxic assaults.

Chemical-dependent gardens are perpetually stressed from being perpetually out of wack. Toxins have killed so many beneficial insects & soil microorganisms & so weakened the plantlife that all such a gardener can do is try to patch over the damage with the same array of toxins that caused the damage.

Thrips tend to be a greater problem where beneficial insects have been removed from the environment -- predator insects are always slower to return than are pests, so pests return rapidly & further toxification is undertaken before even the slightest semblance of balance can be restored.

And anyone who thinks they need malathion for aphids just isn't thinking about these things rationally; it's like if an itchy toe could be fixed by scratching it for a couple seconds, & you decide to bang on it with a sledgehammer as the best line of defense. I have to assume the other chemical decisions were as unsoundly based, because the rational you've dismissed as radical. You posit a worst-case scenario of thrips stripping elms, yet you can't kill elm thrips without also killing a whole array of beneficial insects thus making the environment MORE inviting to thrips for the next cycle. The LASTING method of thrip control is with predatory mites, soil mites, lady beetles, & nematodes -- but everytime you toxify the environment instead, you destroy a dozen beneficial components of the environment sledgehammering the one harmful pest, thus causing the problems to escalate year by year rather than diminish.

It's amazing to me that people in love with their toxic methods call those of us who don't use toxins "radical," yet you keep getting pests in your garden while I do not. If there were legitimately a problem in my garden that only synthetic toxins had any chance of taking care of, I would consider that option, but I've gardened since the 1960s & over time even the "exceptions" I once thought were necessary were not exceptions at all. An organically balanced garden is a healthy garden. A chemical-dependent garden is not. It sometimes takes more patience with organic methods -- in three years it is possible by biological means to get rid of Japanese beetles once & for all, but people who prefer toxins will be using them forever annually patching over a problem that will never cease.

To me you sound like the radical, not because you require toxins so much as you require blinders. You believe you can't get rid of aphids without synthetic pesticides, so why is that I can do so very easily. You have harmful pests that you believe cannot be controlled without harsh pesticides, but I have so few harmful pests that their damage, if any, is never visible. You have to spray your shrubs & trees because they are attacked by pests & disease, but mine are neither diseased nor infested though I do not spray even with organically approved pesticides let alone the nastiest stuff you rely on. Why would your garden be so doomed without annual applications of sundry toxins, but mine thrives without them? I don't believe I'm just lucky & you're cursed by God; their are rational reasons for my not having the problems that afflict your garden, & those reasons are methological.

You've made an emotional or political decision (rather than a reasoned or scientific one) to dismiss effective methods as "radical" if they do not require toxins. And so yhou put on your moonsuit & respirator to take care of problems that keep recurring because of your actions. That's very much like banging your head into a wall & when you discover your head is injured, bang it a second, third, & fourth time, never realizing the problems are returning because of, not in spite of, your actions.

-paghat the ratgirl

[paghat]

If I partially confused your error about plum curculio with Sherwin's error about apple maggots, my apologies. When you made the untrue statement about plum curculio, you called it "another" pest that required synthetic chemicals to control. I assumed by "another" you were insisting apple maggots as mentioned earlier in the thread required toxic sprays, & "another" one that required it was plum curculio. If you had a third pest in mind I missed it somehow.

I'll post the relevant information on plum curculio further below, it'll make a good match for the citation-riddled data on organic control of apple maggots I already provided. But your denying the cowshit post is more fun just now:

If you never made the "farmy smell" post there must be two John Bachmans. Ever since you or your evil twin posted about the glories of the farmy smell of cow manure, Granny Artemis & I have incorporated the phrase "ahhh, that lovely farmy smell!" as our recurring synonym for "cowshit" every time we drive by a dairy. I just this minute did a google-groups search on the phrase "farmy smell" to find out if I'd been miscrediting that lovely discription of cowshit to the wrong fellow. I only got one hit, & it certainly appears to be you saying how much you enjoy the "farmy smell" of cow manure:

Having long ago lived next door to a dairy for a year, these sorts of references stick in my memory. I may even write a cowshit article for paghat.com someday, I've got many garden notes about cowshit just waiting to organize. In fact I lived between a dairy & the now defunct Longacres race track, & between the odors of horse shit & the cowshit, the horseshit was sweeter, but to each his own. Why you wouldn't want to be admired for liking the smell of cowshit best puzzles me. Even Garrison Keeler would agree with you, in his spoof of a Copeland diddy, ending on the sentimental lyric: "Proud and sure, cow manure, I know where I am," for which I wish I possessed the entire lyrics.

I think I remember pretty correctly your recurring advocacies of the right chemical properly used, though that certainly was not an exact quote as "farmy smell" was. Maybe you just don't know how your advocacy sounds sometimes. Very much in keeping with your post in this thread asserting that following label instructions renders all pesticides totally safe -- that's just untrue. The reality is that "used as directed," pesticides & herbicides have done great harm to watersheds & lakes & locally to Hood Canal, it took no off-label use to do great harm. Used strictly as directed, these chemicals have accumulative effects which label instructions don't take into consideration, combining effects when other chemicals are added into the garden mix according to THEIR directions, all of which degrades or combines into still other chemicals, many carcinogenic, none of those assessed before those misleading instructions are concocted.

Indeed the labeling is vastly more for legal rather than safety concerns.

It did not surprise me that you expressed a profound & misguided faith in labels which instruct that toxins be dumped in your immediate environment. It doesn't mean I disrespect you the way i would disrespect a Monsanto flack pretending to be a disinterested party as he obeys the company dictate to muddle every argument, but on another level its sometimes more annoying when reasonable people make unreasonable assertions.

Really I was responding to your untrue statement that "another pest" (I assumed you meant in addition to the apple maggot that had just been discussed in the thread) that cannot be controlled organically was plum curculio. You were dead wrong but i weary sometimes of correcting that sort of misinformation & so posted about your love of cowshit instead, thinking myself amusing rather than bad for it.

Both those orchard pests are now pretty easily controlled organically. That plum curulio was once believed to have no effective organic control was disproven a good five years ago, when the final barriers hampering organic orchards in the Northeast fell away (Pacific Nrthwest organic orcharders didn't want the sudden competition & were sorry the Northeasterners wised up).

Surround is approved as an organic pesticide. The effective ingredient of Surround is natural clay kaolin (hard to call it "active" ingredient since it is inert). Field trials overseen by Drs. Michael Glenn & Gary Puterka of the USDA found that orchards that had been experiencing 20 to 30 percent damage from plum curculio dropped to .5 to 1% damage with application of Surround. (It could well be that with broader organic principles in place, even Surround would not be necessary, but commercial orchards are by their nature not mixed-species environments so it's hard to achieve the prophelactic balance that is easier in a more complex community of gardened plants).

Now the chemical industry would prefer it if what you said were true, & would want it noted that Surround does not kill anything at all, but only suppresses sundry pests up to & including plum curculio. From a growers point of view there really is no difference, except the well-protected organic crop has a higher value than a crop from the chemical-dependent.

If I get a wee bit peevish about flat assertions that have no truth & which misrepresent organic principles as weak or tepid & encouraging pests, it's cuz it's annoying to see presumedly reasonable individuals insisting on such falsehoods then advovating the use of harmful toxins as completely safe safety when used responsibility & mistakenly insisting there is no choice about it.

Invariably, as in the two examples presented in this thread by yourself & Sherwin, there is always a choice. The decision to further toxify the environment cannot possibly be arrived at responsibly when the first piece of "reasoning" is that pests can't be organically controlled so there is no choice. Frequently the organic choice is objectively the more effective choice, & yet advocates of toxicity don't want the documentation of such facts, won't read the science, & will rarely correct their story.

-paghat the ratgirl

[sherwindu]

I have noticed several things in paghat's replies on this topic.

For one, she talks about her experiences with Elm Trees and Roses. Does she grow apples or plums? She quotes a lot about this study and that, but what direct experience does she have herself. For every reference she quotes about organic methods, I can find an equal number of those advocating spraying with chemicals.

Paghat also fails to make a distinction between commercial orchards and home orchards. A commercial orchard cannot closely monitor the effects of hundreds of trees, and therefore takes a 'blanket' approach to control. The more sophisticated of these orchards will put out traps to determine what type of insect is attacking, and when best to treat for it. A home orchardist can be more selective and can do a better job of monitoring pest damage.

Although I concentrated on insects, fungus problems are also something which can ruin your crop, and even kill your fruit trees. I have not found any organic fungicides that work effectively, and I have tried quite a few, like Rhotenone.

Lastly, Paghat thinks she can win this argument with documentation. I have examined some of this material and have found no substantial evidence that organic methods can control the problems already mentioned. The growers in my Fruit Club who use organic methods are limited to two choices. Accepting a goodly amount of ruined fruit and/or limiting themselves to certain disease resistant varieties, which only takes care of fungus, but not insect problems. I work too hard maintaining my trees to see the fruits of my labor thrown away by insect infestation. Not to mention the trees that are lost by insects like borers. I consider the state of the art, that organic methods can be used to cut down on problems, but have not quite reached the point where they alone can do the complete job. Unfortunately, the new varieties of apples that are disease resistant, although improving, have not equaled the taste and flavor of other apples.

If Paghat can grow fruit without spraying, she is certainly a most fortunate person.

Sherw> >

[sherwindu]

I have religiously cleaned all fruit from my backyard. I tried all these traps, and still the insects have come. There are no other fruit trees in my neighborhood to account for this infestation. The traps help somewhat, but don't do a complete job.

I don't know why paghat keeps talking about commercial orchards. We are home gardeners, who grow things in our backyards, on a much smaller scale. Insect damage is more distributed in a large commercial orchard, so if a small percentage of the trees get hit, there are many others to take up the slack. That is not the case of a home orchard, where you have only a handful of trees, usually one tree per variety. If one of those trees gets hit, you have lost that variety of fruit for the season.

You should also menti> >

[cat daddy]

Is it really worth it? Would you drink it? Would you put it in baby food? You are and we are...........

Pesticides in Produce

"Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to nearly 20 pesticides per day."

"Peaches and raspberries had the most pesticides detected on a single sample with nine pesticides on a single sample, followed by strawberries and apples, where eight pesticides were found on a single sample."

"Peaches had the most pesticides overall with some combination of up to 45 pesticides found on the samples tested, followed by raspberries with 39 pesticides and apples and strawberries, both with 36."

12 Most Contaminated Buy These Organic

. Apples . Bell Peppers . Celery . Cherries . Imported Grapes . Nectarines . Peaches . Pears . Potatoes . Red Raspberries . Spinach . Strawberries

[Dick Adams]

I spray and I use organic methods. It just depends on what the problem is. I lost a tree to borers. Next time I find them I'll use industrial grade insecticide. But getting rid of ants just takes habenero pepper.

[John Bachman]

Ahh, the memory power of google exceeds my own. It seems that a reply I made to a survey posted by a would-be book writer in 2000 caught pighat's attention. Although the term "cowshit" was not used, cow manure was, and I confessed a preference to the "farmy smell" of cow vs other varieties.

I stand corrected and apologize to pighat for accusing her of making stuff up.

While the label provides legal protection to the manufacturer if the user misapplies the product, that is not a bad thing. The labels also meet the requirements of the EPA for approval for use.

However, the labels also provide detailed instructions for the use of the product in areas that I mentioned above and also with regard to application in proximity to waterways, public water supplies and private wells.

I believe that if the restrictions are followed, the product can be used safely.

Surround does indeed provide effective control of plum curculio when applied according to it's label. That requires reapplication after every significant rain as Surround washes off easily and complete coverage is essential.

It also necessary to use a large amount of surround to get effective coverage 0.5#/gallon is recommended. That is a lot of material to apply after every rain.

Will some homeowners use Surround effectively? Yes, some will.

I will stick with Imidan at the rate of 1#/50 gallons applied every 10

- 14 days and follow all of the other label instructions. Then I will eat my perfect fruits with full confidence that it is safe to do so.

John

[cat daddy]

instructions

Not very reassuring, considering the following:

Basic Testing to Identify Chemical Hazards

IMIDAN

"This chemical was not included in EPA's survey of basic testing data."

WSU Pesticide Information Center

Sheet for Imidan

"Gowan, the registrant for Imidan, does not have the required toxicity data to support a general use category in a residential setting for Imidan. EPA has allowed a residential use for this SLN under the conditions that it be labeled a restricted use product."

So, neither the EPA nor the manufacturer have complete data.

[John Bachman]

Not quite correct. There is not enough data to justify "a general use category in a residential setting." I stated in one of the earlier postings that Imidan is a restricted use insecticide and that is one, but only one, of the reasons I obtained my pesticide applicator's license.

As I stated earlier, a control for plum curculio used to be in general fruit tree insecticides and fungicides that are available to unlicensed applicators. However that control was removed from those products two years ago.

This leaves the homeowner unprotected except, as paghat pointed out, for products like Surround-WP.

I do not want to deal with the Surround baggage and am licensed so I will stick with Imidan as an effective, easy to use and safe control for plum curculio.

John

[paghat]

I tend to cherries & plums in my own garden, cherries & apples on an estate where I'm the head gardener, not to mention blueberries, serviceberries, loganberries, & the like. But big deal. I was also an itinerant farmworker as a child travelling with carnies, Indians, & Mexicans (some of whom today own the very Walla Walla orchards they once worked in). So one way or another I've been in orchards since age three or four. But who grew & picked apples longest is hardly the basis for the science unless it all took place in horticultural experimental stations orchestrated for the specific purpose of comparing cultivars & methods.

Fact is, a controlled study means LOTS more than one individual's experience. Your experience being one of taking orders from the chemical companies makes you wildly UN-knowledgeable, & whether you did things wrong for one year or fifty years, your horror of horticultural science couldn't have assisted you in gaining knowledge.

That you believe your personal experience relying on toxins could ever successfully contradict controlled field studies for the USDA & at experimental horticultural stations such as at Cornell is one big clue you don't know squat, since successful commercial growers do monitor the literature to incorporate modern improvements, to correct mistakes, to improve harvests, & to improve the profitability of each harvest. If they were like you they'd still be praising DDT incapable of advancing.

Yet you don't bother to cite any, doubtless because they'd be years outdated or generated by the companies selling the products & quite naturally recommending everyone use their products. Someone smarter than you certainly could cite good studies that show the effectiveness of all sorts of chemicals -- that wouldn't change the fact that you posted extreme falsehoods (either from ignorance or lying, I assume the former & that you are not intentionally this dishonest) & it remains that your insisting there is no other way (whether for apple maggots or for funguses) was provably incorrect, plane & simple.

I addressed quite carefully in the plum curculio post about the problems backyard fruit gardeners cause commercial organic growers by not doing as good a job of it as the professionals.

If only; that's unfortunately untrue, at least in practice. The average gardener is neither organic nor particularly knowledgeable. Back-yard fruit trees are frequently neglected, maltreated, & infested. Backyard fruit trees are more apt to be slathered with chemicals that in the long run perpetuate rather than reduce problems. They are the leading threat to organic growers. It is up to the commercial growers to raise the awareness of amateur growers who tend to lack the professional organic grower's knowledge & skill at maintaining healthy trees. If you knew anything at all about what you're blowharding about, you'd've known that.

But don't make the mistake of assuming professional orchardists are big agribusiness outfits. Unlike for wheat or corn, orchards are still generally small enterprises, & maximizing the value of each individual apple matters a lot to a smaller company.

pretences clipped]

Yep, that's the way to ignore the facts & promote toxins no matter what. If you make a statement that is easily shown to be untrue, just skip ahead with a brand new "yeah but" & toss out something else that doesn't substantiate your point either.

You keep admitting you have all these horrible diseases in your very few trees. Since organic gardeners do not have all these problems, perhaps you should re-evaluate your misunderstanding of cause & effect.

Since some of the strongest disease-resistant apples were released between the 1920s & 1970s, they are themselves heirlooms by now, & have stood the test of time for public tastes. Macoun is still one of the best apples for growers in areas afflicted with fireblight, & it was released in 1923. Spartan is one of the most disease-resistant apples & in the top ten of public & grower popularity, developed by one of those Experimental Stations you disapprove of -- in 1936. I seriously doubt you could tell the difference blindfolded between a an heirloom McIntosh & a radically disease resistant Liberty, since they do taste awfully similar; but it hardly matters if you could or couldn't because what are grown today as McIntoshes are actually about thirty different strains some disease resistant others not.

Certainly any pretense on your part that chemical-slathered apples taste better is the height of nonsensical propogandizing without a lick of sense involved -- even apart from your wildly mistaken notion that only the newest cultivars are disease resistant. Fact is, some of the recent Purdue-Rutgers cultivars (1945 to present) are the best-tasting apples ever developed, having been developed over a long period for size, color, flavor, & disease-resistance. But if someone had a romantic desire for an old variety, Macoun & Spartan are disease resistant too, as are some of the modern McIntoshes which are not actually the same apples our great-grandparents grew. Mcintoshes for backyard gardeners tend to be grafted onto semi-dwarf hardy roots very different from what were grown on small farms fifty years ago.

And if anyone REALLY wants a true heirloom apple, guess who grows them -- small specialized organic growers, both because such specialists truly love the romance of the apple so are hierloom collectors, & because so many heirloom apples are vigorous strains that respond splendidly to organic techniques. One reason some of these heirlooms have been around so long is BECAUSE they are disease resistant, & growers who have bad luck it's because they killed off the soil microorganisms & beneficial insects with chemicals & their orchard or garden is overall stressed & unhealthy

-- NOT because they grow an old variety that'll be all diseased unless its got five or six different poisons dumped all over it. So you're just blowing toxic smoke.

Though of course it's partly a matter of taste so anyone can say anything where flavor is concerned -- & the public taste isn't always the smartest. So far as public acceptance is concerned, the Red Delicious is the perfect apple, but that has got to be based on physical appearance; by my taste-buds it's the nastiest tasting of the top ten apples, yet it persistantly ranks #1 with the public because it's by far the prettiest & it will even stand perfectly upright on the table. I'm personally not fond of Granny Smith tartness -- but it's a top-ten apple with the public, & an heirloom, & anyone who loves Granny Smiths will love the tartest of the newest disease-resistant cultivars, some of which share with Granny Smith a bit of crab-apple in their breeding. The majority of the newest varieties have been targetted for Northeast growers who were behind the curve in learning how to grow apples properly because they had fiercer disease problems to overcome -- those growers tended to prefer McIntoshes so resistant varieties arose that look & taste like McIntoshes, & tend to have "Mac" incorporated in their registered names, but being sold as new strains of McIntosh are just sold to the public as regular McIntoshes but no longer prone to scabs & holes.

If anything, it is the chemical-dependent growers who are least concerned with flavor. You yourself admit the chemical-dependent are looking for shortcuts, not the best methods. They spray for fear the skin of the apple will become flawed, looks counting for more than flavor (forgetting that organic apples now rank #1 with the juice outfits too & even flawed apples are more valuable without toxins). The chemical-dependent pick early for easier shipment, so no one will ever know what they might have tasted like ripe. How long an apple can be stored at cool temperatures is far more important to shortcut-orchardists than is the flavor -- if it still LOOKS good shipped to market three months after it is picked, who cares if it tastes grainy & disgusting -- the grower who didn't care to protect the public from toxins certainly isn't going to make sure it tastes perfect.

Firmness for shipping & color for eye-appeal & storability for later sale & large size are all issues that effect the development of apple cultivars for traits other than flavor. Disease resistance has never been one of the negative factors for flavor. The horticultural stations developing these strains, however, have no built-in commercial reason to be compromising on flavor; they are not rushing so or not sending inferior strains to market. Often the only "change" in a new cultivar is it blooms later & so misses all the peak moments for disease susceptibility -- late-blooming varieties old or new just naturally get exposed to fewer pests, funguses, & pathogens, & the late-blooming varieties have been especially promoted since 1999 by the Mid West Apple Improvement Association.

Fact is, some of the recent super-resistant Purdue-Rutgers cultivars are the best-tasting apples available, so new or old varieties, disease-resistance & flavor go hand in hand. Some of the older tried & true varieties are just about as disease-resistant as the Rutgers varieties because Heirloom doesn't mean disease-ridden, jus as new cultivar doesn't mean bad flavor. And since it IS a matter of taste, some of the heirlooms are crappy tasting by my estimation, having been developed for physical appearance more than for flavor.

More relevantly, since organic orchards are the strongest & the only expanding area of temperate fruit production today, the public is certainly most fortunate.

It sometimes looks like part of your problem, Sherwin, is that you know nothing about fruit-growing post-1995, that you somehow got set in your ways during one of the worst periods of American Agricultural chemical dependency & can't evolve. You seek magic bullets which provide harmful illusory & temporary fixes, & have no patience to do it right & achieve a healthy balance. Many of the most startling strides forward in improved agricultural techniques are less than ten years old, & that's especially true for apples that have undergone a veritable revolution just in the last decade.

-paghat the ratgirl

[paghat]

But you're dead wrong in your belief that a few trees in the backyard are less apt to respond to organic principles. You're dead wrong that the body of knowledge developed at experimental horticultural stations & put into practice by organic growers have no application to the backyard orchard. Since you refuse to adhere to any method that does not permit you to see everything die right before your eyes in a matter of seconds, you'll never have a clue how easy organic gardening can be. It's not something you try for a month on one tree then discard -- you have a toxified diseased property & to establish any holistic semblance of an organic balance would require more than you quickly discarding all organic techniques.

the trees get hit,

That's pretty irrational stuff you've trundled out there. Organic gardens are healthier gardens; they are not more prone to insect attack, they are less prone. You have to keep using toxins because dependence breeds dependence, not because there is no better way.

Even more intriguingly however, you previously you argued the opposite:

So which irrational thought are you promoting? Only big orchards can be organic because they can afford more diseases, while back yards can't be organic because that one tree will surely be dieased? Or only back yard growers can be organic because they can focus on each plant, but big orchards MUST take a blanket approach with toxins?

You are shifting the argument back & forth so that you can continue to believe toxins are next to godliness, & you're not sounding rational.

In reality QUALIFIED commercial orchards easily monitor their trees just as will any skillful backyard orchardist. But lazy second-rate growers & backyard amateurs might not bother, & thus frequently end up with a toxic pig-apple harvest.

But yes, from the chemical-dependent grower's point of view, shortcuts are the only important thing, even if the shortcuts are illusory & based on ignorance. If you create an unhealthy environment & try to fix it with poisons instead of with improved horticultural techniques, obviously you just set yourself up for a cycle of seasonal failures -- & every time you MUST use toxins to keep things from going away, that's evidence of failure which begets failure. If it SEEMS to be a shortcut, it is indeed apt to count for much more than quality, valuation, blance, health, & safety.

This is why commercial organic growers are on the cutting edge of today's orchard industry & are not bankrupting at the same staggering rate as chemical-dependent growers. Organic apples have an expanding marketplace; the chemical-dependent have whiners & complainers wishing George Bush would bail them out the graves they dug for themselves. It's also why promoters of chemical swill have to pretend very clear findings from the same horticultural stations & USDA can't possibly be right if a hand-out from Ortho or Monsanto says otherwise.

the pheromones. I have

No pheramones are used to trap apple maggots, so what in the world are you doing? Everything incorrectly, obviously.

If you can afford jugs of gawdawful expensive chemicals, you can afford $3 sticky traps, as that's the cheapest on the market; really pretty ones made as much for human delight rather than just to attract pests can cost ten or twelve dollars each. And sure, you COULD pay $20 or even more if you'd rather have a really decorative one with a nice green leaf sticking out of the top -- even those are pretty cheap since you can re-used forever, recharging them with scented sticky-bait, which is cheap.

The traps are not hard to make at home for nothing, even an old christmas tree ornament will do the trick -- the total cost would be for the baited glue, which if you get screwed for the price it might cost $7 for enough of the scented sticky bait to charge three old ornaments from the attic or thrift store if you were too damned cheap to spring for a manufactured trap -- the total cost for the year could be less than many of us pay for coffee in a single day (chai in my case lately). Since the traps work pretty well even without the scented lure, you could just recharge the ornament with tanglefoot -- that'll save you on that goshawful expense of $7 for the baited equivalent.

As for pheramones, you were talking about apple maggot lures. The scented bait does NOT consist of pheramones. They are food bacteria -- they attract most of the fruit-targetting flying pests of which apple maggot is the biggest nuisance, & do it without killing fifteen kinds of beneficial insects that also protect the trees. Nowadays the lure is built right into the product's sticky component so it costs nothing extra for its first year's use. You can buy the baited glue separately to make home-made traps or revitalize an old ones you say you paid too much for. It's nonsense to say this is too expensive while you spend a far greater fortune on toxins.

And if your low level of knowledge in these matters really did cause you to put some sort of costly pheramone in an overpriced decorative trap, you've nothing to blame but your own ignorance that it didn't work & it cost too much. And this kind of insanity is how your "personal experience" taught you organic methods are no good is it? Criminy!

-paghat the ratgirl

[lgb]

Well, take the elm beetle larva. The first few years I thought it'd go away and I did nothing. The elm leaves were nothing but ribs. Then a systemic was applied. It worked, but I thought it was overkill. The next year I did nothing again, and again I had ribs for leaves. Since then I've watched for the first ones to appear - they overwinter in the ground (maybe as eggs) and emerge along about now - I'd better remember to check.

So I waited for mother nature to solve the problem - didn't work. Sevin does. That's good enough for me.

BTW, I use absolutely no chemicals on my vegetable garden other than Miracle Grow. In that case the benefits aren't worth the risk.

We can have this argument forever. I'll never convince you that different situations require different solutions (pun intended) and you'll never convince me that chemicals are the work of the devil. So that's the end of it for me.

I never should have made the original post - I knew what the response would be.

[lgb]

I say beetles, you say thrips - IOW, you didn't read my post very well before your knee jerk response. Figures.

[paghat]

Eh, not that you even care. The elm leaf beetle is controlled by Bacillus thuringiensis ssp tenebrionis, beneficial insects, & even with seaweed spray. You elect instead a method that kills the natural controlling agents, thus harming the entire localized ecosystem, in the long run worsening the condition you misguidedly assaulted, because harmful pests re-establish theiur populations MUCH faster than do predatory insects which will only return after their prey re-establishes itself. So its no wonder you have these problems. Whether for thrips or beetles, the reality is the same: chemical dependency breeds chemical dependency -- in stressed & unhealthy gardens.

The bacillus can permanently retard beetle populations keeping their populations indefinitely in decline so that the need to fight them becomes lessoned year by year, & the temptation to use toxins eventually reduced to none.

It can take three years to stop the problem entirely then it may never need to be done again. The impatient might in the meantime want to use organic approved pyrethrum & isopropyl alcohol, or a fish emulsion or seaweed spray or horticultural oil for added boost without killing off all the beneficial insect population. When you insist your only choice is a moon-suit, respirator, & toxins that kill everything in their path, you only guarantee that the problems you admit to having recur year after year will continue to recur year after year.

The bacillus HAS to be the subspecies tenebrionis which targets elm beetles especially well; the caterpilar Bt doesn't do it. Btt kills elm beetles without harming the natural predetors of elm beetles. For so long as you insist in YOUR kneejerk way that your only option is to use methods that simultaneously kill the beneficial insect population, the beetles win.

But you've made it clear you couldn't care less.

-paggers

[sherwindu]

All other things about knowledge being equal, a home gardener can give more attention to their limited number of trees than a commercial orchard with hundreds of trees to tend. There are some amateur gardeners are not very knowledgable about spraying, but I am not including them in this discussion. Most of the people I know belong to NAFEX and other similar organizations who can hold their own with the commercial people.

Where do you get your statistics from? What does happen is when a home owner sells their place and the new owner is either disinterested in maintaining the fruit trees, or doesn't know where to turn to for help. Again, I am not including them in this discussion

There are many organizations like NAFEX and MIDFEX, where home growers can pick up all the information they need. The commercial growers could care less.

I have visited several organic orchards with plenty of spoiled fruit around.

These apples mentioned have specific resistance to certain problems due to their natural genetics, but they were not specifically bred to be disease resistant. Of course, there are no apples I know of that are naturally insect resistant.

You missed the point. The best tasting apples are not disease resistant, and thus need the protection of spraying.

Nonsense. Hierloom apples are not naturally more adaptable to organic preventative measures. Organic growers do not have a corner on that market either. The only disease resistant apple I grow is Williams Pride. It is a rather good tasting apple, but certainly not the best tasting apple in my backyard. I also picked that apple because it is an early bearer to complement my late apples.

Again, nonsense. Heirlooms are not naturally disease or insect resistant. As you mentioned some have resistant to particular pests, but not to all.

Who cares about the public taste. The reason I grow fruit myself is that I can select varieties that I can't buy in my supermarket. Ones that don't have that classic red shinny look, but taste terrific.

Are you talking about commercial growers again? Who cares what they grow.

Never said that. Spraying is no shortcut task. It takes a lot of work to do it right.

Nonsense. I don't like worms and rot inside my fruit.

Again, who cares about the commercial growers.

I don't think so. Unfortunately, breeding disease resistance into an apple does not necessarily breed better flavor, as well. It is all a comprimise. Maybe someday, they will find cultivars that have both these characteristics, but for now, these newer apples like Liberty and William's Pride are only good tasting apples, not great ones. If you can get an apple to taste as good as a Hudson's Golden Gem, for example, and still be disease resistant, I'll put in my order immediately.

Never. Almost by definition, these heirlooms were grown by people who could care less about appearance. Where are you getting your information?

I go by results. I'm not going to paint my fruit with the disgusting Surround stuff. Spray chemicals on fruit break down within weeks from the sun. I also thoroughly wash my fruit with soap before eating to insure that there is no residue. My results are not illusory and certainly not temporary. My fruit comes out clean every season, without fail. Despite all the claims by the fruit developers, they have a long long way to go before they get my attention.

Sherwin D