To be or not to be....organic

I voted sometimes organic, sometimes not. I think this one could well be a hot topic. Having worked in a land based industry as a professional I have particular views on this subject.

On the whole I find that many organic principles and theories work well in the garden, once in place, they are more effective and easier to work with than conventional methods. Even so, I'll not be getting rid of the slug pellets or brushwood herbicides just yet, we use these for very specific areas and problems and not indiscriminately.

We were lucky we started out with a blankish pallette for a garden since it hadn't been touched for a couple of decades, the wildlife were pretty much already in place. Even so, it took a good 3 years for the beneficial insects to find their way to the garden in numbers large enough to actually help out with the insect pests.

We feel that carefully planned and sensitive management is the key to a healthy, well balanced garden, whether you use soley organic methods or not.

I use whatever works. Sometimes a blast of water on aphids works better than chemicals and egg shells and copper help with snails but until I have enough of both to do the job I will also use chemical protection as needed. I prefer organic fertilizers over chemical ones, good old compost and manure seems to make most things happy and cost less too. I also buy ladybugs to release if aphids get to be a real problem because not only do they eat them but they are just so downright cute!

For larger pests like moles or gophers I prefer traps since the poisons work their way on up the food chain and can continue to kill the hawks, fox, cats etc that feed on them.

I try to begin with an organic solution and if not then I step up to something stronger. However, sometimes the organic solution will work better, so there is no harm it trying it first.

I use both buti'm going more to organic as i get the farm to be able to suport it self in the method of organic crops but like Baa if it means losing the crop I will get out the cemicals but usr them as lighty as possible

Philosophically I like organic approaches to problems in my garden:

- I handpick, spray with water and mix up homemade insecticidal soap for the aphids until the ladybugs come to the rescue.

- I use an organic pellet for the slugs and snails (and handpick and squish them when I find 'em; and

- I haul a lot of manure, leaves, and compost to amend the soil. I'm also considering using alfalfa or cottonseed meal as a vegetable fertilizer this year.

But I do use glyphosate (Roundup) on the Bermudagrass and poison ivy when all else fails ;>)

I voted 'other'. I generally don't use chemicals such as pesticides...but I will use them if I really need to. The 'really need to' usually only happens a few times a year...like when trying to stop scores of ants from making a highway into my house...or maybe sprinkling Sevin on a few plants that are being destroyed. I don't mind a few nibbles here and there, but when a plant is being eaten to the point where a large percentage of leaves are being removed...it's time to act. Basically, I'm not pesticide happy like some people I know around this area (nobody on DG). I find that it's usually inexperienced gardeners or 'weekend gardeners' that go crazy with the chemicals. You know, the people that watch TV and all of a sudden realize they have a need to spray everything in site because the advertisement on TV says so. Those people.

As far as fertilizers go...I don't do much of that either. I'll spray Miracle Grow maybe twice a year, but that's about it. I put as much shredded leaves and hardwood mulch on my beds as possible and I could probably do without fertilizers alltoghter...but I use a little anyway.

The plants seem fairly pleased with their home here...along with the bumble bees, robins, toads, garter snakes, bull frogs, tree frogs, salamanders, etc...so I think overall I'm doing ok.

I don't use chemical pesticides on any of my food crops, including herbs. About the only chemical that I use is a fertilizer for my indoor-started seedlings. I have found the organic ones to be too smelly in the confined house.

For the major part of the yard, I don't handle any chemicals due to my physical problems, but only lawn pre-emergent is used to any degree. I have found IPM increasingly successful; most of the time I have to do no work -- all my beneficials are hard at work after years of being chemical-free. Also many songbirds, toads, garter snakes, bats, etc.

Yes, I admit to being tempted to go get the meanest chemical poisons that I can find to combat some of the pests, but within a day or two, wildlife comes to the rescue, before the problem gets out of hand :) If I have a plant that requires chemical protection for survival, it gets pruned with a shovel.

You know, those people who are pesticide happy, will learn thier lesson when they burn thier plants, this can happen if you spray too often or mix the spray too strong.

I go organic with the majority of my gardening practices. Mulches, water blasts, soap sprays, ladybug releases, cornmeal gluten, worm castings, etc...but when it comes to the nutgrass (purple nutsedge...you know the one...the one that makes all those evil nuts underground that reach to the core of the earth.) I result to nasty chemicals. I just started going organic a couple of years ago and have been surprised and delighted at the critters that have found my garden. Lots of birds, geckos, blind snakes, garter snakes, praying mantis (they're way cool), ladybugs, etc. Now that these "caretakers" have set up shop I'll do my best to keep the inorganic solutions to a bare minimum and let them work their magic.

Trying to go organic in the big city.

Maybe I haven't been gardening long enough to have stubbed toes on all the stumbling blocks.

Time will tell.

Adam.

I make my living tending other peoples gardens, so I can not afford the mistakes and losses that make up p art of the home gardening experience. So for ten years I have gardened ORGANICALLY almost exclusively. I have called in the big guns for Boxwood leaf miner a few times over the years, but thats been it.
I find that a garden that has all its micro-organisms intact and that is fed compost and organic fertilisers is much easier to care for in the long run. It's easier to work with nature than against it.

I found it very difficult to choose between the second two alternatives. I garden completely organically apart from just recently I've used weedkiller on nettles and bindweed.
However I regret even using that as it's definitely damaged some of my plants.
There just aren't enough hours in the day to get out there and dig all the weeds, but where I can I use sheeting and carpet etc to smotherem

Editing as I intended to say that I agree with Miggy on the no chemicals meaning a much better balanced ecosystem. I may be lucky in living in a relatively dry part of the UK, but I don't even use slug pellets as the thrushes zap them.
I could hear one this afternoon tapping away for its dinner - another snail makes itself useful lol

This message was edited Thursday, May 8th 12:56 PM

When my wife and I were living in New Zealand, we met a 7th~generation, self~made millionaire farmer. He runs sheep and cattle on 1,200 acres of well~watered limestone.

The farm itself is so beautiful it has been featured in both books and tourism promotions about the country. You've recently seen bits of it in a really famous series of movies.

Anyway, Reg put it this way about organic farming:

"You see, all those chemicals I'd have to apply, they cost a lot of money. My costs would go up about 50% and my yield would go up about 30%. Going organic, my yield is 30% lower than my neighbor's but my costs are 50% less. It's simple arithmetic."

This literally grass roots input~output analysis is very close to an economist's heart. Reg and his wife Anne live in a really nice house.

Adam.

All good points and HCZone brings up an excellent one re the advertising and quick fix style gardening.

I wonder how we all see the term organic. On the farm, quite a percentage of the visitors saw organic as simply no chemicals. As gardeners, we may be more clued up on this situation as many of us have access to places that sell organic chems (some of which are decidedly dodgy on the organic point, at least some of those on the Soil Association list are).

Aotearoa

Has Reg ever written a book on his success?

For fertilizing I use some granulated cowdung and compost in the garden, in my flowerpots I prefer a non-organic fertilizer called "Osmocote", beige granules containing the ordinary NPK but releasing it gradually throughout a long period.

I don't use many pesticides, but I immerse all my fuchsias in water with a fungicide called Ronilan in late autumn before storing them in peat-litter for overwintering. (The stuff is not for sale anymore, but one also can use Eupareen).
For treatment against rust Baycor is recommended, though I didn't have satisfactory results with it last year when my fuchsias were terribly rusty by the warm and extremely wet weather during the summermonths. I did have some success with it curing a light infestation, though. And immersing cuttings from rust-suspected plants also can help to wash the spores away.

When severe attacks of green aphids occur, I usually immerse plants in a solution of water with some methylated spirits and detergent (sometimes enriched with some tobacco-extract), which gives only a temporary relief, or treat them with a chemical containing pyrethrins or other things like carbamates from a spray can, but I must conclude nothing really effectively deals with this pest.
My latest plan is to treat the soil of potplants with something called "Admire", this is said to kill aphids of several kinds (also whiteflies) when it has been absorbed by the plant itself. I bought it a month ago, but didn't try it yet. I intend to use it in summer when whiteflies appear (which are likely to spread rust), and when I have to bring my fuchsias inside in the autumn. Especially in winter my fuchsias are attacked by green aphids.

When we first moved into our house 10 years ago I had a friend who is in pest control come spray around the outside of the house for earwigs (they were everywhere). A few days later I was outside working in the yard and saw how many other insects that were killed at the same time and pledged I would never use chemicals of any kind like that again. Now we have a lot of bugs, but most of them I see as doing their own jobs in my yard. I squish most things that get out of hand and if a plant gets rust really bad or some other bad problem usually it is my fault because I'm trying to grow something that isn't in my zone, so I rip it out and replace it with something more compatible.

I feel much more comfortable with the kids, dog and rabbit running around in the backyard knowing that they can't get sick with something I did (and if they squish some bugs that's OK too)

Sorry for taking a while to follow up:

"Organic," to me (now that I have started gardening and thought a bit about it), is not merely the absence of petro~chemically derived additives in gardening or farming but a methodical use of various natural processes (based on organic chemistry), that encourage biodiveristy, tilth and water retention, thus creating a suitable environment in which plants will thrive.

This ought not to be confused with "natural," as gardening and farming are man~made modifications of the environment, often introducing plants and minerals foreign to the locale.

Organic, perhaps, could be viewed from it's chemical dimension. Organic chemistry is that which is based on molecules formed with and around carbon, and sometimes silicon (they behave similarly).

The cry that organic gardening (or farming), is that which is done in the absence of chemicals is inaccurate. It's just that the chemicals ~~~ humic acid, for instance ~~~ are naturally occuring and not extracted catalytically from petroleum. Rather, we assist in their manufacture through activities like worm farming, composting, etc.

I am quite interested in other people's thoughts about this.

BAA: Find the book "Biodynamic Farming in New Zealand." Though you probably know, I will explain for others who may not, that biodynamics is a system of agriculture based upon the philosophies and studies by Rudolph Steiner. The first picture you will see on this site is on Reg's farm:

http://www.biodynamic.org.nz/

Adam.

Thanks for the link.

I had hoped that Reg had written a book about his success, it would be worth reading I'm sure.

I don't think I've seen my friend Reg read anything save the local newspaper (known to all as the "two minute silence"). He's never so much as written an email (his wife and mine have an active handwritten correspondence).

Reg learned his farming, "on the ground," he says, and left school at 14 to take up his trade full time. What he lacks in formal education is outweighed by wisdom. He can tell from the taste of soil what it lacks and from how a ewe walks when she'll throw her lamb.

I've found this practical, no~frills, no~nonsense approach to the work wonderfully helpful in solving the complexities of my own.

We look forward to getting back there in December.

Adam.