Organic Gardening

[Leon Roskilly]

Any others into organics on AN?

 

http://www.organicgarden.org.uk/forum/

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

Bet my courgettes are bigger than yours!

[Guest Ferret1959]

Ain't organic gardens full of crap????

[chesters1]

"organic" gardening is in realty just reverting to medieval practices resulting in undersized malformed fruit and veg ,however now that EVERY dammed chemical that ever worked on killing bugs and to some extent disease has been banned by the EEC then we will ALL be growing them :mad:

[John Ellison]

I returned to allotment gardening last year after an enforced break. I took over a wilderness, Borneo jungle type plot and finally got it all dug over this morning. 12 1/2 months after starting. I used to used Calomel dust to dip my brassicas in before planting out, Banned now.

I used to put Bromophos round the plants to stop cabbage rooot fly, Banned now. In fact all my reference books I used to work from I can now use sod all to stop the little nasties eating my stuff

:confused:

[Leon Roskilly]

Just frozen my first bag of mangetout peas, and handed some spare lettuces to the neighbours.

 

New potatoes almost ready to dig.

 

(I hate that time when the last of my home grown potatoes is peeled, and we have to revert to shop bought ones. You don't seem to notice the difference in taste so much when you go from shop potatoes to home grown, but the other way round, for some reason, the difference is pretty noticeable )

 

Home grown strawberries - yum!

 

 

TL - leon

 

[ 13. June 2004, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Leon Roskilly]

chesters1:

"organic" gardening is in realty just reverting to medieval practices

I don't think that they had Bocking 14 back then Chesters!

 

TL - leon

[Scapanapper]

Great looking plot Leon.

I try to follow organic principles when ever possibly especially on the fruit and veg garden however I have used some weed killer on parking areas and patios.

My biggest problem tends to be the blooming bunnies who find my plot an irresistable fast food resturant. I have to cover the brassicas with wire mesh to keep them off! but this also deters the cabbage white butterflies.

As for organic methods being medieval, the use of chemicals has only become prevalent in the last 50 years or so. Every one gardened organically until after the second world war and these methods fed the country in its' darkest hours.

The taste of home grown produce is superior to shop bought stuff (pychologically anyway) and it enables one to try varieties never used by commercial growers.

Long live the compost heap!

Cheers Scapa

[chesters1]

most our chemicals that linger on are victorian ,all the plant extracts etc whilst maybe slightly more safe than modern chemicals are still toxic ,being a "natural" or "bio" makes little difference to their safety as you remember extract from poison arrow frogs are great for killing people ,chewing rhubarb leaves or fox gloves or a yew salad have pretty much the same effect .

modern practices evolved because the old ones were time consuming or innefective ,the act of picking off individual cabbage white caterpilla`s on a 20ft row of cabbage is no big deal but doing the same in 20acres is a little more tedius and the old method of spraying aphids with soapy water only makes clean aphids with modern soap (the old soaps using petro byproducts did work to a degree)and who nowadays can afford the tobbacco to make a nicotine spray (although maybe plants could have a anti smoking patch installed at germination) the reason besides effectiveness for modern chemicals is cost = 1 tractor driver plus the chemical = in victorian times hoards of labour so whilst not being good for the country side it (modern chemicals) does bring the cost of the finished crop to a commercialy viable asset ,now all the effective chemicals are being banned then it only benefits countries with cheap labour and an already bio (because they cant afford the chemicals in the first place) agriculture .Britain cannot (legally ) pay a wage small enough to keep a little profit at the years end so will end the remaining agriculture we have now

and i agree home grown strawberries taste far better than shop bought unfortunatly we eat ours before they get fully ripe otherwise our slug friends get them first

what really makes me angry is coal tar soap you cannot get it :mad: you can get coal tar fragrence :mad: what next a £20,000 box with car fragrence on it instead of a car :mad: cant even get carbolic soap anymore no wonder the country is rife with MRSA :mad:

and Bocking14 is just Comfrey more a repellant than a insecticide i`d rather killem than repell them repelled they can creep back whilst you are waiting for the next batch to grow !

 

[ 13. June 2004, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]

[Leon Roskilly]

chesters1:

Bocking14 is just Comfrey more a repellant than a insecticide i`d rather killem than repell them repelled they can creep back whilst you are waiting for the next batch to grow !

er, Bocking 14 is a Green Manure, not an insect repellent.

 

See:

 

http://www.houseofstrauss.ukonline.co.uk/n...en_manuring.htm

 

Here's my Green Manure 'factory' producing an organice fertiliser almost chemically identical to 'Tomorite' but for free

 

 

Chesters, 21st Century organic vegetable gardening has come an awful long way from the caricature in your mind.

 

Why pay tax to set aside good land due to overproduction of harmful food, when that land could be used to produce wholesome food at lower yields?

 

Me, I love the flavour of the foods I grow

 

TL - leon

[chesters1]

i`m not against the principle only the cost ,i cannot taste any difference in organically produced veg and ordinary stuff both purchased in the supermarket and despite the "clean" image of organic produce if its watered from either a well or a tap then its still exposed although in lower quantities to the very chemicals (+ hundreds more) that organic producers dont want to use (even rainwater isnt pure)

i agree that veg raised in you own garden tastes better but is it that its fresher or maybe just because you expect it to be different rather than destinctly different to "factory" food.

i`m not knocking growing your own as our freezer still has veg from last years crop (french beans were very good) and this years on their way .Modern chemicals used as directed and sparingly have little harmfull residues (if they did most of the country would be dead) but on a commercial size bio culture can only obtain the same results as the past ,remember medieval farmers actually had a surplus in grain and meat and sold it worldwide but compared to modern methods it was just a drop in the ocean after all we can grow mountains of the stuff

Organicaly grown foodstuff cannot compete both visually and in quantity with chemically grown foodstuffs and frozen veg has more " goodness" than any "off the shelf" fresh foodstuffs .

the same tax that sets aside uncommercial fields is given as a subsidy for organic growers who produce inferior crops in both quality and quantity in fields of the same size

 

[ 13. June 2004, 11:12 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]