In article , sherwindu
wrote:

I have noticed several things in paghat's replies on this topic.

For one, she talks about her experiences with Elm Trees and Roses. Does she
grow apples or plums? She quotes a lot about this study and that, but
what direct
experience does she have herself.

I tend to cherries & plums in my own garden, cherries & apples on an
estate where I'm the head gardener, not to mention blueberries,
serviceberries, loganberries, & the like. But big deal. I was also an
itinerant farmworker as a child travelling with carnies, Indians, &
Mexicans (some of whom today own the very Walla Walla orchards they once
worked in). So one way or another I've been in orchards since age three or
four. But who grew & picked apples longest is hardly the basis for the
science unless it all took place in horticultural experimental stations
orchestrated for the specific purpose of comparing cultivars & methods.

Fact is, a controlled study means LOTS more than one individual's
experience. Your experience being one of taking orders from the chemical
companies makes you wildly UN-knowledgeable, & whether you did things
wrong for one year or fifty years, your horror of horticultural science
couldn't have assisted you in gaining knowledge.

That you believe your personal experience relying on toxins could ever
successfully contradict controlled field studies for the USDA & at
experimental horticultural stations such as at Cornell is one big clue you
don't know squat, since successful commercial growers do monitor the
literature to incorporate modern improvements, to correct mistakes, to
improve harvests, & to improve the profitability of each harvest. If they
were like you they'd still be praising DDT incapable of advancing.

For every reference she quotes about organic
methods, I can find an equal number of those advocating spraying with
chemicals.

Yet you don't bother to cite any, doubtless because they'd be years
outdated or generated by the companies selling the products & quite
naturally recommending everyone use their products. Someone smarter than
you certainly could cite good studies that show the effectiveness of all
sorts of chemicals -- that wouldn't change the fact that you posted
extreme falsehoods (either from ignorance or lying, I assume the former &
that you are not intentionally this dishonest) & it remains that your
insisting there is no other way (whether for apple maggots or for
funguses) was provably incorrect, plane & simple.

Paghat also fails to make a distinction between commercial orchards and
home orchards.

I addressed quite carefully in the plum curculio post about the problems
backyard fruit gardeners cause commercial organic growers by not doing as
good a job of it as the professionals.

The more sophisticated
of these orchards will put out traps to determine what type of insect is
attacking, and
when best to treat for it. A home orchardist can be more selective and
can do a better
job of monitoring pest damage.

If only; that's unfortunately untrue, at least in practice. The average
gardener is neither organic nor particularly knowledgeable. Back-yard
fruit trees are frequently neglected, maltreated, & infested. Backyard
fruit trees are more apt to be slathered with chemicals that in the long
run perpetuate rather than reduce problems. They are the leading threat to
organic growers. It is up to the commercial growers to raise the awareness
of amateur growers who tend to lack the professional organic grower's
knowledge & skill at maintaining healthy trees. If you knew anything at
all about what you're blowharding about, you'd've known that.

But don't make the mistake of assuming professional orchardists are big
agribusiness outfits. Unlike for wheat or corn, orchards are still
generally small enterprises, & maximizing the value of each individual
apple matters a lot to a smaller company.

Although I concentrated on insects, fungus problems [additional
pretences clipped]

Yep, that's the way to ignore the facts & promote toxins no matter what.
If you make a statement that is easily shown to be untrue, just skip ahead
with a brand new "yeah but" & toss out something else that doesn't
substantiate your point either.

You keep admitting you have all these horrible diseases in your very few
trees. Since organic gardeners do not have all these problems, perhaps you
should re-evaluate your misunderstanding of cause & effect.

Unfortunately, the new varieties of apples that are disease
resistant, although improving, have not equaled the taste and flavor of
other apples.

Since some of the strongest disease-resistant apples were released between
the 1920s & 1970s, they are themselves heirlooms by now, & have stood the
test of time for public tastes. Macoun is still one of the best apples for
growers in areas afflicted with fireblight, & it was released in 1923.
Spartan is one of the most disease-resistant apples & in the top ten of
public & grower popularity, developed by one of those Experimental
Stations you disapprove of -- in 1936. I seriously doubt you could tell
the difference blindfolded between a an heirloom McIntosh & a radically
disease resistant Liberty, since they do taste awfully similar; but it
hardly matters if you could or couldn't because what are grown today as
McIntoshes are actually about thirty different strains some disease
resistant others not.

Certainly any pretense on your part that chemical-slathered apples taste
better is the height of nonsensical propogandizing without a lick of sense
involved -- even apart from your wildly mistaken notion that only the
newest cultivars are disease resistant. Fact is, some of the recent
Purdue-Rutgers cultivars (1945 to present) are the best-tasting apples
ever developed, having been developed over a long period for size, color,
flavor, & disease-resistance. But if someone had a romantic desire for an
old variety, Macoun & Spartan are disease resistant too, as are some of
the modern McIntoshes which are not actually the same apples our
great-grandparents grew. Mcintoshes for backyard gardeners tend to be
grafted onto semi-dwarf hardy roots very different from what were grown on
small farms fifty years ago.

And if anyone REALLY wants a true heirloom apple, guess who grows them --
small specialized organic growers, both because such specialists truly
love the romance of the apple so are hierloom collectors, & because so
many heirloom apples are vigorous strains that respond splendidly to
organic techniques. One reason some of these heirlooms have been around so
long is BECAUSE they are disease resistant, & growers who have bad luck
it's because they killed off the soil microorganisms & beneficial insects
with chemicals & their orchard or garden is overall stressed & unhealthy
-- NOT because they grow an old variety that'll be all diseased unless its
got five or six different poisons dumped all over it. So you're just
blowing toxic smoke.

Though of course it's partly a matter of taste so anyone can say anything
where flavor is concerned -- & the public taste isn't always the smartest.
So far as public acceptance is concerned, the Red Delicious is the perfect
apple, but that has got to be based on physical appearance; by my
taste-buds it's the nastiest tasting of the top ten apples, yet it
persistantly ranks #1 with the public because it's by far the prettiest &
it will even stand perfectly upright on the table. I'm personally not fond
of Granny Smith tartness -- but it's a top-ten apple with the public, & an
heirloom, & anyone who loves Granny Smiths will love the tartest of the
newest disease-resistant cultivars, some of which share with Granny Smith
a bit of crab-apple in their breeding. The majority of the newest
varieties have been targetted for Northeast growers who were behind the
curve in learning how to grow apples properly because they had fiercer
disease problems to overcome -- those growers tended to prefer McIntoshes
so resistant varieties arose that look & taste like McIntoshes, & tend to
have "Mac" incorporated in their registered names, but being sold as new
strains of McIntosh are just sold to the public as regular McIntoshes but
no longer prone to scabs & holes.

If anything, it is the chemical-dependent growers who are least concerned
with flavor. You yourself admit the chemical-dependent are looking for
shortcuts, not the best methods. They spray for fear the skin of the apple
will become flawed, looks counting for more than flavor (forgetting that
organic apples now rank #1 with the juice outfits too & even flawed apples
are more valuable without toxins). The chemical-dependent pick early for
easier shipment, so no one will ever know what they might have tasted like
ripe. How long an apple can be stored at cool temperatures is far more
important to shortcut-orchardists than is the flavor -- if it still LOOKS
good shipped to market three months after it is picked, who cares if it
tastes grainy & disgusting -- the grower who didn't care to protect the
public from toxins certainly isn't going to make sure it tastes perfect.

Firmness for shipping & color for eye-appeal & storability for later sale
& large size are all issues that effect the development of apple cultivars
for traits other than flavor. Disease resistance has never been one of the
negative factors for flavor. The horticultural stations developing these
strains, however, have no built-in commercial reason to be compromising on
flavor; they are not rushing so or not sending inferior strains to market.
Often the only "change" in a new cultivar is it blooms later & so misses
all the peak moments for disease susceptibility -- late-blooming varieties
old or new just naturally get exposed to fewer pests, funguses, &
pathogens, & the late-blooming varieties have been especially promoted
since 1999 by the Mid West Apple Improvement Association.

Fact is, some of the recent super-resistant Purdue-Rutgers cultivars are
the best-tasting apples available, so new or old varieties,
disease-resistance & flavor go hand in hand. Some of the older tried &
true varieties are just about as disease-resistant as the Rutgers
varieties because Heirloom doesn't mean disease-ridden, jus as new
cultivar doesn't mean bad flavor. And since it IS a matter of taste, some
of the heirlooms are crappy tasting by my estimation, having been
developed for physical appearance more than for flavor.

If Paghat can grow fruit without spraying, she is certainly a most
fortunate person.

More relevantly, since organic orchards are the strongest & the only
expanding area of temperate fruit production today, the public is
certainly most fortunate.

It sometimes looks like part of your problem, Sherwin, is that you know
nothing about fruit-growing post-1995, that you somehow got set in your
ways during one of the worst periods of American Agricultural chemical
dependency & can't evolve. You seek magic bullets which provide harmful
illusory & temporary fixes, & have no patience to do it right & achieve a
healthy balance. Many of the most startling strides forward in improved
agricultural techniques are less than ten years old, & that's especially
true for apples that have undergone a veritable revolution just in the
last decade.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
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"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson