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Old 26-07-2003, 10:22 AM
anton
 
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Default Banned Herbicides & Pesticides


Alan Gould wrote in message ...
In article , anton
writes


snip
The recent 'ban' on some chemicals popularly used in gardening is not
being introduced out of any support for organic methods, but on safety
grounds.


Mmm. Safety may be the claimed reason. However, the effect
of this and many other bits of EU legislation is to raise the
costs of entry into certain markets, and price out less usual
or specialist products. The effect is to ensure that only a few
large companies supply the market- in this case for garden
chemicals.

In the past, many chemicals have been similarly banned e.g.
aldrin and dieldrin to name but two, but the effect was to encourage the
introduction of other chemicals in their place. There is an ongoing
demand for such products by gardeners who choose that style of
gardening, and commercial interests see that the demand is met.



I think it's nonsense to describe use of all the various types of
garden chemicals as 'that style of gardening'. Somebody may
use a fungicide on his roses, or feed his tomatoes, or do
as I do and use glyphosate twice a year around the base of
fruit trees. Each person has their own style of gardening.

A lifetime of organic gardening without using manufactured chemicals
proves to me that they are not necessary.


Agreed- they probably aren't necessary. However, they
can be very useful, imho.

We currently garden two acres
at age 75+70 and we could not cope with all the problems brought about
by chemical gardening.


Problems caused by chemical gardening? I haven't had any,
unless you count the temporary defoliation of a young fruit tree
when I got impatient with painting alcohol on each little cluster of woolly
aphis. That's not much in ten years. Admittedly, I'm
only a very small user of garden chemicals, but I think that demonstrates
the error of trying to put the non-organic
world into a single 'chemical' camp.

On the other hand, weedkilling at the base of trees avoids
a lot of strimming or laying down of unsightly carpet squares;
weedkilling the gravel drive has stopped weeds colonising and destroying it;
painting alcohol on woolly aphis has kept the
problem under control on some young fruit trees, sodium
chlorate has allowed me to go back to bare earth in order
to clear some areas around greenhouses that were covered
with broken glass. I could not have done what I've done here
is so few hours without the use of chemicals.

--
Anton