In article , sherwindu
wrote:

paghat wrote:

In article , sherwindu
wrote:

Many very odd things in what you wrote, bordering on phobic.

Hey Rat Girl,
I am sorry I don't belong to your church of the organics.

That you find better agricultural practices a religion indicates you are
not thinking rationally to start with.

No, no! You obviously missed the irony of my statement. What I meant was
you pursue this organic kick like a religion.

Your previous admission that you
spray CONSTANTLY except for that brief time when the orchard is blooming
shows how extreme your case is. I wouldn't call your own behavior cultic,
merely dangerouslky mnisguided.

First of all, I spray in about 3 week intervals, during the fruiting
season,
aside from
dormant oil in early spring. I think you have your own flavor of extremism
bordering
on your cult of eco-purity.



I have visited organic
orchards, and see a lot of spoiled fruit on the ground.

Of course fruit falls to the ground. Unlike your orchard, most farmers do
not HARVEST from the ground.

I do not harvest from the ground. I will occasionally pick up a
fruit which
has fallen
which does not look attacked by either insects or critters.

You said explicitely that the wasps that
attack fruits on the ground is the reason you have to poison your orchard
continuously. Wasps feed & drink at the wounds of damaged fruits, yes, but
worse, fruits harvested after they fall are a common source of of e-coli.

I don't know about your orchard, but I do a daily patrol and clean up
any fruit
on the ground. Most of it goes on the compost pile, or the garbage
if it looks
like it has some kind of infection.



I have tried organic
sprays, and from my experience, they don't work.

Organic principles does not mean a quick fix spray. You clearly don't know
squat about the topic, & it's unfortunate for you & the helath of your
family, your neighbors, your environment.

Why don't you climb off your soapbox.

Organic would define the way you
mulch, the way you mow or don't mow nearby meadows, the types of predator
inesects you encourage from the wild or introduce, PROPERLY TIMED
bacterial sprays, much else that is the reason the organic fruit farmers
have repeatedly been shown in university studies to produce fruits larger,
tastier, & more numerous than chemical-reliant farmers.

I don't know about the chemical-reliant farmers, but I will match up
my fruit
against any organic gardener for taste, size, etc. Most organic
gardeners won't

grow the heritage type fruits I grow, because they are so susceptible
to attack.



I loose very little fruit to
insect damage.

By killing everything in sight & spraying continuously. Great.

Yes, when I put in many hours of taking care of these trees, I don't want
to see the results go to pot.



There is no good organic spray for Apple Maggot, etc.

You're only thinking alternatives to poisons aren't poisonous enough,
because you're fabulouslky ignorant of organic methods. Otherwise you'd
already know most organic fruit growers do not have apple maggot or plum
curculio,

Are you making this up?????

the ONLY orchard problems that have no after-the-fact fix that
is organic. A properly cared for fully-system organic approach does not
allow for the mass-flourishing of a single species of insect in the first
place.

And you call me phobic?



With a healthy predator insect population & a proper clean-up problem at
the end of each harvest month, your concern about there being no organic
sprays for apple maggot does not even apply.

With YOUR system then perhaps it is a perpetual worry -- use of poisons
breeds reliance on poisons. For these pests afflict non-organic gardeners
to a much higher degree & the real threat posed to organic growers would
be neighbors such as yourself whose trees have an increased likelihood of
introducing diseases into a larger area.

Your taking "preventative" actions by spraying toxins continuously except
for a brief time of flower wouldn't even be a chemical-sucking hilljack
grower's answer to apple maggot -- not if they were in their right mind.

Apple maggots can be fully controlled by organic methods, just not by
organic sprays.

Baloney!

The method is one of the least invasive imaginable: do NOT
leave unharvested fruit on the the trees through winter, & do NOT leave
apples on the ground to rot & become breeding factories. Unsalable fruit
should be heat-composted. Because apple maggots harbor in winter fruits &
emerge in spring, that first generation will not exist in properly
maintained organic orchards. And as you have admitted to harvesting even
the e-coli-ridden fruits off the ground, you shouldn't have apple maggots.

As previously mentioned, my orchard is inspected daily and no fruit is left
on the ground, and still these pests come. My mulch pile heats up
nicely, so
I don't think they propagate there. I never admitted to harvesting
e-coli-ridden
fruits off the ground.



They can still be worrisome because of the bad behaviors of neighboring
orchards. When BAD growers introduce these diseases to finer orchards next
door, the back-up organic method (sticky-traps shaped like the fuit to be
protected) is not the world's best fix, it is true, & some organic growers
unfortunatley prefer to not sell organic fruit that year. But a community
of growers who all do it right & do not permit fallen fruit to harbor
maggots through the winter won't have to make this sorry-ass decision.

Keeping a clean orchard doesn't work for me. I'm not one of those BAD BAD
growers.



Other organic controls for apple maggot includes fruit thinning, which has
the added benefit of larger tastier fruits that remain, & the majority of
commercial orchards do fruit thinning anyway because shitloads of inferior
fruits are not marketable for anything but the low-end for juice, or hog
food. Some do the thinning by hand, chemical-reliant growers have chemical
methods of doing it, & the organic alternative to the chemical method is a
fish oil & lime sulfur combination -- all methods of thinning increase
fruit size.

I do extensive thinning, as well.



But even in a worst-case scenario, the method you outlined as your method
would NEVER be necessary because of two pests difficult to eradicate after
bad agricultural practices have helped establish them in an orchard. A
"break" from organic principles would be brief & minimimally invasive. The
"low spray" technique is unfortunate but some growers use it as a fallback
position, though it does harm the marketable price of the fruit thus
treated in that year. Organically approved late-season sprays like Entrust
do work well on apple maggots, but only when used in concert with year-end
ground clean-up, & early season use of kaolin (Surround). It remains that
in the majority of organic orchards, unless there's someone right next
door doing it very wrong, these additional methods won't be necessary.

The organic sprays are a pain
to use. For example, Surround leaves an ugly film on the fruit,
which would
make insect damage almost preferable.

This certainly is not true with proper choices & proper timing, so you've
just shown again you don't know what you're doing.

Have you ever had to clean up the Surround junk off your fruit?

But certainly if by
"pain" you mean they only work if you're knowledgeable about organic
methods, then yes, you're right.

Organic sprays and other preventatives have a long
way to go to get me to use them.

Despite studies such as conducted at Cornell & Washington State U. that
show the present state of organic orchard methods producese more fruit,
tastier fruit, the preferred fruits in the marketplace, you're going to
stick with methods that are known to be inferior for the quality & vallue
of the harvest.

Can you supply specific document sources, or else I'm going to think that
you are making this all up?

You prefer inferior fruit, toxic fruit, fruit that far
fewer people would want to purchase or eat if they knew what you were up
to. And you'd rather hitch your waggon to a dwindling & failing
argricultural system & avoid the fastest growing & most successful segment
of agriculture today.

I'll match my fruit any day against an organic gardener.



Some farmers growing annual vegetable crops have to make concessions in
order cash in on the growing organics market, but orchard fruit growers
gain on every level, because each year organic methods are followed, the
orchard becomes healthier & produces better.

Having a small backyard orchard, I value ALL of my
fruit, and am not willing to sacrifice a good portion of it on the
alter of
organics.

Sherwin D.

Back yard amateurs are the worst enemies of professional, qualified,
knowledgeable organic growers. Your toxins spread into finer orchards; you
are more apt to spread diseases; you are responsible for the implosion of
pollinator & predator insect populations. You also risk the health & lives
of everyone who eats fruits that developed in what you admitted was
continuous chemical spraying except during the brief time of flowering.

I may be a backyard grower, but I'm not an amateur. I'll match my
knowledge
of fruit growing against yours any day. You sound like an elitist snob,
certainly
someone who thinks they know it all. I don't distribute contaminated
fruit. I
allow the chemicals to subside naturally in the sun before
harvesting, and I
carefully wash any fruit I give away, or tell people to do so. The washing
is just an added precaution, since most of the chemicals have dissipated by
the time I pick the fruit.



If the science didn't support these statements then your likening organic
gardening to a church with an alter for sacrifices would apply. But these
are not things that need be taken on faith. Whereas your belief system is
not supported by the faith, does require faith in lieu of reason, & does
cause human sacrifice. So if being religioius is as big an insult as you
would have it, you have just insulted ourself by projecting.

It's not the science I'm against, but your trying to cram this stuff
down our
throats, like it's the gospel.



If you love gardening, if you love your orchard, at least LEARN what the
organic methods really are before passing judgement on things you have
rejected out of hand without a lick of knowledge.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

As a final comment, maybe you know of a friendly preditor that will kill
the West Nile bearing mosquitos in my area, or the Asian Longhorn
Beetles. I'm sure the municipalities here would like to know about them.

Sherwin Dubren

You've been unable to credibly or knowledgeably contradict anything I've
posted so I won't go over it again, except to reiterate that YOUR
continuing notion that organic gardening is merely a cult makes you
something of an idiot savant, without the savant.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com