In article , John Bachman
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 11:08:47 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

In article , "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"John Bachman" wrote in message
...


This is all reasonable advice, but realize this:

You're giving it to someone who is completely in the dark, and not just
with
regard to gardening. So, it's important to point out garden
chemicals have
not been and can never be correctly tested for safety. I'm sure you're
aware
of that.


Nonsense. If the material is used in strict compliance to the
instructions on the label (and it should not be used in any other way)
safety is assured. Those instructions include dosages, personal
protective equipment requirements and minimum re-entry intervals.

Nonsense.

snipped the pharmetulogical analagy

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


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).

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


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 manu
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens.edible/msg/813bab6a3eab3f95?dmode=source&hl=en

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
--
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"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
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