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#16
31-08-2004, 03:00 AM
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On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:50:06 GMT, wrote:
 i never ever once used any chemical spray, including those which are called "natural" like pyrethrin. to me, ANY substance which can kill 6-leggers, will also kill 2 and 4 leggers!!!Yet 16 years in the field and have never seen the case :/ anti-pesticide fantatics of the garden world.....LET US JOIN TOGETHER!!!only if it is a news group with "organic" in the title J/K welikes the diversity....Can't we all just plant along!!! Lar. (to e-mail, get rid of the BUGS!! It is said that the early bird gets the worm, but it is the second mouse that gets the cheese. |
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#17
31-08-2004, 07:47 AM
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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 |
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#18
31-08-2004, 07:52 AM
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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 |
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#19
31-08-2004, 09:42 AM
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#20
31-08-2004, 10:47 AM
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sherwindu wrote:
I don't know what part of the planet you live in, but in the Midwest here, the yellow jackets can sometimes be a big problem. Haven't seen many this year, but previously, they went after my peaches. I had one good sting when I tried to pick up a fallen peach on the ground, and it took a lot of antihistamine to quiet that one down. EV also doesn't seem to be growing fruit, or she would not be so complacent about apple maggots, plum curcullio's, etc. Hang on there! I'm actually proactive in a natural kind of way. I'm new to fruit trees, but have been gardening organically for more decades than I care to admit. My garden usually does quite well with a minimum of the most benign possible intervention. My plums are not great this year, true, but most other things have done fabulously well, despite, or because of, the cool, wet growing season. Why not the plums? If I can figure out what went wrong, I can take measures to try to prevent it from happening again. Reading everyone's suggestions pointed up causes that weren't uppermost in my mind. For instance, Paghat mentioned nearby farms. I don't think they're close enough, but it reminded me that there's is a huge, overgrown vacant lot 100 yards away that was partially bulldozed when a structure was removed. The property has some apple and crabapple trees in horrible condition, as well as all kinds of berry brambles in bad shape. The destruction of their habitat might have lead to some of the bad bugs migrating. There's an old Italian guy just up the road who had a stroke about 5 years ago and can't maintain his fruit trees. His fruit probably rots on the ground. Both of these factors could explain some of the problem. The weather has also affected the insects. Populations vary with every growing season. Every year I try to spot as many of the bugs as I can. This year there have been more sawflies, plant bugs, plum and black vine curculios, pear slugs, a few types of hoppers, and ladybugs than usual. I've seen fewer varieties of butterflies, and fewer individuals ... even cabbage whites, but there are a fair number of moths of various kinds ... including fruit moths, and Iris borers. I guess it's my own fault for having so many night flowering plants. ;-) Other insect numbers and diversity seem to be about normal for here, though maturity cycles are delayed for most. I look for population patterns. My attitude is that that if I maintain good gardening practises, and take the necessary precautions, next year will be better for the plum. There are things that I can do, but other things are beyond my control. I'm within spitting distance of a golf course, and they spray gawd knows what. Several of my neighbours hire companies to spray toxics so that their lawns will be weed and grub free. Luckily, some others are too cheap, and some have even come around to a more organic approach after seeing my garden. I keep a photo journal of the garden every year. I'll be putting August up in the next few days, but here's July: http://home.ca.inter.net/~stevedor/EGarden3.html Happy gardening, EV The only time I stop spraying is when the blossoms are out, since I don't want to kill my pollinators (bees). Sherwin Dubren paghat wrote: In article , Larry Blanchard wrote: In article , says... that's beautiful. thank you. Yes it is. But EV doesn't have a hedge full of yellow jackets and an allergic wife - I do :-). I've tried traps and spray cans - Orkin is getting called Monday. First off, I'm curious, does Orkin come out after midnight? Because if the nest is assaulted in the daylight hours, most of the wasps won't be in it, & it will take ghastly amounts of extra-poisonous toxins sprayed more places than just the nest to get rid of them, & if there is ever going to be a good chance of anyone getting stung by generally-innocuous wasps, it will be while the Orkin dude is screwing around the nest. Yellowjackets are gardeners' friends, as they eat garden-chomping insects. A single yellow-jacket nest in a garden will be cleaning out aphids, leafhoppers, beetle larvae, flies, & all manner of garden-munchers at a fantastic rate. They also disperse trillium seeds, which imitate a meat or insect odor that causes yellowjackets to cart away the seeds & drop them elsewhere when they figure out it isn't meat. Paperwasps abandon their nest after a single use, so their nesting presence is temporary. If it WERE necessary to move one it could be wrapped in plastic at night & carted away, as none of the colony will be outside the nest at night; poisoning would not be necessary. I've known many people who had serious even life-threatening allergies to bees or wasps, but none thought the best way to deal with it was to poison the garden & inevitably their pets, their kids, themselves, & all the beneficial insects in the vicinity. My grampa had a bee allergy sufficient that he kept a kit handy in case he was stung, but that didn't keep great-grampa from keeping honeybees, & while my life overlapped grampa's, he was never stung that I knew of & never had to use the kit. Wasps don't have to be nesting in the garden to be in the garden; you'd have to poison all the surrounding yards if their mere presence incited such a phobia. The best way to deal with them is personal calmness. You could offer wasps a greasy chunck of fried chicken & let them crawl all over your hand in great numbers & the happy little buggers would never sting you (they might accidentally nibble you if your fingers are greasy enough to be mistaken for the meat). You could brush them off your shoulder or off your sandwich with the back of your hand & they wouldn't sting, though they might dart over your hand to get back on the sandwich. At a recent lakefront gathering for a Golden Anniversary party, the primary picnic area had a large colony of ground-wasps nearby. Grandkids & great-grandkids of all ages were running around; people were eating shitloads of meat; & the wasps were truly a nuisance trying to get their share of the food. But even with a dozen rowdy kids running about, & everyone's hands shooing wasps away from food, not one person was stung, & the only complaint became that meat-eaters had to go indoors to finish their meals in peace. I'd frankly still like to get rid of that particular nest if meat was going to be eaten around there regularly, but it would never be an allergy issue because those critters wouldn't even sting the kids who were testing the limits of wasp docility. They're not highly aggressive. I have lived around yellow jacket nests for half a century & have never been stung by a paperwasp or ground yellowjacket. I was once stung by a mud-dobber, but that was because I leaned against it by accident & it was trying to get loose; mud-dobber wasps ordinarily won't sting under any circumstance, their stinger being for hunting much more than defense; they don't even defend their little mud-nests. As a kid I once laid down under a swarm after a paperwasp nest had had rocks chucked at it. Several of us kids lay perfectly still & watched the swarm. At their angriest still it was a cinch not to got stung. Ground-dwelling & paper-nest wasps are only aggressive when their nests are mucked with, so the best way to deal with them is by marking the location noticeably & giving them some space. Nearly all wasp attacks are the fault of people attacking the nest, even with freezing aerosols & pesticides the wasps can still manage to be defensive as death is not instantaneous. When their nest isn't mucked with, they're very easy to live with. There are two understandable reasons to not tolerate a nest; allergy is not one of them since there'll still be plenty of wasps from elsewhere nearby. But if a paper nest is built right outside the door, the mere opening & closing of the door could make the colony feel threatened, so it would have to be zapped at night with freeze-spray, wrapped in plastic, & taken away (we had one on our front porch for a season however & the wasps were so little trouble we failed to notice the papernest on the ceiling until after the season was over & the nest was abandoned). The second reason they might not be tolerated is for nesting right by a bar-b-cue or picnic site. Although not apt to sting they can be so happy about all the meat people are bringing to them that they will descend dozens at a time onto every picnic plate & make it hard to eat in peace. If becoming vegetarian isn't an option, then the picnic-site nest won't be very tolerable. But if one is lucky enough to have a nest in a corner of the garden where one needn't be digging, or high in a tree where the colony is never threatened, it should be cause for thanks, as they are assisting the garden every minute they are active. -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 |
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#21
31-08-2004, 11:17 AM
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#22
31-08-2004, 11:17 AM
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#24
31-08-2004, 07:41 PM
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In article , Larry Blanchard
wrote: In article , says... n 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. another long rant snipped Paghat, have you ever written a brief response? Yes. But I'm not all that interested in communicating with people with the attention span of a gnat. Now a report on the yellowjackets. I actually called Terminex. The responder donned his protective clothing, located the nest, "froze" it with about a 5 second burst of something, took down the nest and carted it away. He informed me that the yellowjackets would be angry the rest of the day and would die overnight. Apparently they need the nest. If not for your attention span problem you would've seen that in my first post that was the method I recommended, before noting that it really wasn't necessary to remove them at all. However, the frozen wasps do survive the freeze-spray I recommended, & if the Terminex man believed they were dead, it's gonna be so funny when they thaw out in the back of his van. I'm sure it was just your attention span that confused you again though, & he well knew they weren't dead. So - problem solved, no massive pesticide application, and you can kill them without waiting for evening. Wasps that are not in the nest during the freezing aerosol are still present. All proper treatments are done after nightfall. They do NOT die for lack of a nest, so again either you were having trouble with simple sentences or you were intentionally misled by a company that doesn't want to work late. Wasps outside the nest when it is assaulted will look for another existing nest & join it. And unless your whole neighborhood is unusually toxic, there will still be wasps in the neighborhood -- & many species of wasps & bee-flies will visit your garden unless it is the most horrifyingly sterile hellhole on the block. If there really are no wasps left because you assaulted a single paper nest, then live in a toxic zone that also lacks pollinators. In any case, your attention span problem is just serving you ill. You are so proud of your non-chemical method of getting rid of beneficial insects. If you could pay attention, my point re wasps is they are GOOD for the garden; any garden that has them is LUCKY; they are docile if their nest isn't screwed with, & no harm to anyone, & of great benefit. The CORRECT response to a paperwasp nest is to mark it noticeably so no one runs into it, instruct kids not to molest the nest, & for that season you will have one of the best controls for harmful insects living right there in your garden. They will not be there the following year. Removing them was merely moronic. If you can do something moronic without adding the greater crime of spraying pesticides, well two gold stars for your chore-chart. That makes you less a moron that the complete fool who saw wasps on fallen fruit & feels he has no choice but to poison his entire orchard from first bud to final leaf-fall, is feared the apple worms are chasing him, & regards the proven superior methods for organic orchards as merely the techniques of Satan worshippers compared to his best friends the carcinogens. -paggers -- "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 |
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#25
01-09-2004, 01:31 AM
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I am not going to let you have the last word on this.
I asked you for specific information on all these university reports about the wonders of fruit grown organically, and you ignore the issue. Give me a document location on the web that backs up your contention of superior tasting fruit from organic orchards. I have not said that organic prevention is totally worthless. I don't rely on spraying insecticides to do the entire job. I use sticky traps, wasp traps, and even nets around the fruit to keep the bugs from attacking. My only contention is that for the nastier bugs, organic sprays have not yet reached a state of the art where they can do the job. So if it comes to deciding between spraying and losing fruit, I'll choose the later. Also, you have not mentioned spraying for fungicides and organic ways to prevent those problems. I have used organic sprays, like Rotenone, in the past, and they just don't do the job. Maybe in your part of the country, you don't have the problems with Apple Maggots, etc. like we have in the Midwest. I would be surprised if you don't have some kind of pesky bugs, but not knowing about Washington State, I can't judge the effectiveness of organic prevention. I didn't say organic gardening was a cult, but the way you try and push it down our throats gives the appearance of a cult (like this is the ONLY truth, and all gardening nonbelievers will not get into gardener's heaven). Also, your snide remarks against not believers makes me think that you follow organic gardening like a cult. I know some organic gardeners, and none of them threatens me with fire and brimstone if I don't mend my ways. Show me actual facts, and real documentation, and proof that organic gardening will work in the really difficult cases, and then I am ready to switch over. Sherwin Dubren paghat wrote: 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 |
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#26
01-09-2004, 04:09 AM
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In article , sherwindu
wrote: I am not going to let you have the last word on this. I asked you for specific information on all these university reports about the wonders of fruit grown organically, and you ignore the issue. Give me a document location on the web that backs up your contention of superior tasting fruit from organic orchards. As point of fact I already named the universities that are doing these studies on the Nortwest, the Great Lakes Region, & the Northeast, & if you cared, you could've tracked down the specific sources -- you don't care, so why should I do your footwork for you? Well, I will do it for you, not that I expect you to change your attitude -- because what I reported is not rare information from wayward loonies of the Green Party. They come from conservative agricultural universities. But then, you're the sort who only believes it if you see it on the web. The idea of a library or a scientific journal or an experimental station bulletin or even a PDF file not available for free is just too outre for someone demanding a WEB PAGE before you'll believe it. Well, I can provide you a WEB PAGE that proves Jesus was from Mars, I suppose you'll believe that then -- but my citations are to the research stations. ORGANIC APPLES HAVE *THE SAME OR HIGHER PRODUCTION* AND *BETTER TASTE* than apples grown in orchards that do not adhere to organic methods. Such were the findings of studies conducted by Washington State University. Orchards using pesticides had either LOWER PRODUCTION or the SAME PRODUCTION, but not higher; & in taste testings the fruit from pesticide users lost out because fruit from organic orchards is superior fruit. LONG GONE are the days when the organic section was a box of ugly fruit shriveled & crusty. The study is reported in NATURE April 18, 2001, & scores of other places; the research is headed by John P. Reganold. The study showed that organic orchards were furthermore more sustainable economically as well as environmentally; that apples were easiest to test but the findings are being found applicable to other orchard & vineyard settings in the midwest & east as well. This study is presently in its Eighth Year (the NATURE article was its sixth year); the Washington State University Cooperative Extension Bulletin provides periodic updates on the ongoing research, & growers magazines report on it reliably -- growers are definitely following the techniques developed at WSU & MSU. There can't be anyone left with a serious interest in orchards unaware of it. They found some organic methods such as use of weed tarps to be costly or difficult, so not everything organic was equally good. Their findings are going into practical use every year -- doing away with organic methods that are worthless, devising better time-tables & methods for what works best organically. Research involves a great deal about the role of insect life in a healthy organic orchard -- anyone using pesticides is just not going to be even close, & morons who use NEEM oil & then complain organic alternatives leave the fruit sticky are such profound morons it's surprising they can use a computer to type such silliness on UseNet, since that shows no knowledge of organic gardening beyond what can be read off a bottle of whatever can be purchased at Home Depot. There is an ongoing learning curve on what works best -- but already it's working out way better than with chemicals. If you care about an orchard, you will aprise yourself of it even if you must continue hate paghat's guts for daring to be smarter than you are & impatient with you about it. Some techniques such as hand-thinning were more labor intensive than the chemical method, but the extra labor was STILL less expensive than chemical methods so in final analysis organic was more profitable as well as more effective. Similiar research is ongoing at Michigan State University Agricultural Experimental Station, who've gotten the same findings for the midwest. As I already pointed out, apple maggot is VERY manageable without chemicals -- it does require rigorous clean-up, but if there is no rotten fruit left on the ground in which worms overwinter, there will be no first-generation population to emerge in spring; further, sustaining meadowlands near orchards increases the beneficial insect population, the predators such as wasps being SIGNAL to a successful pest-free organic orchard, & anyone boasting of killing all the wasps is of course much lower on the awareness ladder than a baboon's handful of colon apples. The project is titled "Ecology Research & Education in Production of Michigan Organic Apples" with regular reports in FUTURES: MSU Agricultural Experiemental Station Bulletin (some issues you can download as PDF files if you can't leave your computer for anything). The organic orchards are coming out ahead in the three major areas investigated: soil quality, fruit quality, & marketability. Plus MSU's project has established conclusively that chemicals are not needed for apple storage. They have developed 100% organic means to control apple scald, so that the three-million spent annually to treat apples with DPA is money saved, besides that much smaller chemical-load in what we eat. The MSU Fruit School is now producing a generation of midwest agriculturalists who will be MUCH smarter than the previous generation. These aren't just ****wad liberals & commies as the anti-organic brigade of chemical-swilling loons promulgates. Agricultural schools are notoriously conservative & difficult to move from old positions. This position, however, was just too unquestionably the better direction, & even a way to stop farms from failing. The only ones fighting against organic orchards right now are the manufacturers of all those unnecessary toxins. Similar studies are being undertaken by Cornell University for vineyards, with once again the same findings. A vast array of articles in ORGANIC GRAPE & WINE PRODUCTION SYMPOSIUM (Cornell University, 1995), & many more vagrant articles in numerous agricultural journals. There are more such studies up the wazoo. If I seem to be impatient with chemical sucking DORKS who're constitutionally incapable of hearing the facts, it's because this is not rare information. It takes no special brilliance to figure it out, but it takes a special kind of idiot to refuse to figure it out. It doesn't even take concern for the environment since it's ultimately all self-serving & useful to Numero Uno: Man. I posted all the above early in this thread, & yet you had the audacity to ask that I provide information I already provided, because your ilk are essentially self-blinded & will never stop coming back at the truth with your prove-it-dipwad-greeny mindset -- it IS proven, if you can neither follow nor tolerate the science that's not my fault, & if you really can't find your way to organic research articles without me mailing them to you, you're hopeless. When someone starts from a position of disbelief that organic is better for humanity & for the environment, when quite obviously it is better, no amount of validating science as to the IMPROVED value of the fruits will ever change what simply started out, & will end as demented thinking. But these are the facts about organic orchards: The SOIL is better maintained by organic principles (chiefly organic composts instead of chemical fertilizers); pest insects & diseases decrease in significance year by year in an orchard organically maintained; fruit improves in flavor in the better-maintained soil of an organic orchard; & harvests are more profitable in the marketplace. Those are not opinions, that is what the science sustains in study after study. What is now known to be true of orchards in general may or may not be equally true of annual crops on a case by case situation; it is true, as it turns out, for potatoes; but most annual crops do not have the dramatic gains orchards acquire from organic methods. So what I've been saying is RADICALLY factual for orchards which exclusively gain by organic methods, even if perhaps less often definitely the case for annual crops. Beyond that, it is also important to not have the chemicals in the food we eat or sprayed all over effecting all life. To me it seems that even the chemical-swilling jerkwads who don't care about the planet should even so want the most flavorful & best fruits & the highest yields for the highest profits -- just being selfish jackasses should be enough to want to do the organic thing because it pays off in every way. But I guess I will just never comprehend the agenda of chemical-swillers, & know only that no one will ever reason people out of positions they never reasoned themselves into. So I post what is good news & merely fact, & a couple complete asses post baseless unutterable nonsense about killing beneficial insects being a good thing & chemicals being absolutely NECESSARY or the bugs will destroy all the apples on earth. The "excuses" against organic orchards have been all been red herrings. The demand that I provide citations (when I've been the only one all along who provided any) come from jackasses who have none of their own. If I'm not endlessly gentlehearted toward dumbasses it's because I see close-to-hand the sorry effects of what chemical-swillers destroy. Not just as a statistical fact, not just as a theory or possibility for a destroyed future world. I live near Hood Canal, a DEAD waterway, dead TODAY, dead for NO OTHER REASON than gardening chemicals used by waterfront homeowners on their lawns & gardens, so that chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, & all manner of chemistry washes into the water right off the lawns & gardens of waterfront homes. I am old enough to remember there was good fishing in the Hood Canal, & it was also home to giant octopi, & sea otters. My aunt owned a cabin on the Hood before it became a hundred miles of mansions, & what beauty it was. Now, DEAD. Just de-oxygenated depths of sal****er that cannot sustain an ecosystem. People who live on the Hood Canal demand the government do something about it -- but this is one thing that can't be placed on the WHite House stoop as one more evil deed of a sucky president. If chemical gardening was banned along the Hood Canal it would recover. Alas, that simple response will never happen. Because assholes are incapable of acting even in their own self-interest, since they'd first & foremost have to stop being assholes. Such assholes always have an excuse why it doesn't apply to you; or they in particular can't do it for this or that imaginary-sound reason; & when each excuse turns out to be provably false, you come up with another equally fraudulant excuse. I've known people intent on suicide who thought exactly the same way -- for every good reason to live they have a not-so reply. -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 |
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#27
01-09-2004, 06:41 AM
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paghat wrote: In article , sherwindu wrote: I am not going to let you have the last word on this. I asked you for specific information on all these university reports about the wonders of fruit grown organically, and you ignore the issue. Give me a document location on the web that backs up your contention of superior tasting fruit from organic orchards. As point of fact I already named the universities that are doing these studies on the Nortwest, the Great Lakes Region, & the Northeast, & if you cared, you could've tracked down the specific sources -- you don't care, so why should I do your footwork for you? Well, I will do it for you, not that I expect you to change your attitude -- because what I reported is not rare information from wayward loonies of the Green Party. They come from conservative agricultural universities. But then, you're the sort who only believes it if you see it on the web. Not true. Its just that I know there is a wealth of information on the web from reputable universities and research stations and I have done quite a bit of surfing on gardening topics. However, I have never seen anything to back up your claims of superior organic fruit. OK, maybe insecticides are distasteful and harmful to the environment, but you can't convince me that organic fruit grows bigger, tastes better, etc. I will repeat myself again by saying the best tasting fruit varieties are not grown by organic gardeners because of their susceptibility to attack. I grow a Williams Pride Apple because it is a disease resistant variety and a nice early apple, but it doesn't taste as good as a Cox's Orange Pippen or a Hudson Golden Gem. Your State of Washington is known for it's large production of 'Red Delicious' Apples. This is an almost tasteless fruit that only sells because it is large, bright red, and holds up well from orchard to market place. Many people are getting into organic growing not because of their love of the environment, but because of the profit motive. They have scared people to death about getting cancer from chemicals, and know they can charge big bucks if they just stick the 'organic' label on their produce. The idea of a library or a scientific journal or an experimental station bulletin or even a PDF file not available for free is just too outre for someone demanding a WEB PAGE before you'll believe it. Well, I can provide you a WEB PAGE that proves Jesus was from Mars, I suppose you'll believe that then -- but my citations are to the research stations. ORGANIC APPLES HAVE *THE SAME OR HIGHER PRODUCTION* AND *BETTER TASTE* than apples grown in orchards that do not adhere to organic methods. Such were the findings of studies conducted by Washington State University. Orchards using pesticides had either LOWER PRODUCTION or the SAME PRODUCTION, but not higher; & in taste testings the fruit from pesticide users lost out because fruit from organic orchards is superior fruit. LONG GONE are the days when the organic section was a box of ugly fruit shriveled & crusty. People should not buy fruit because it looks nice. OK, you don't have a web site to refer me to. How about a Journal article, or a book? The study is reported in NATURE April 18, 2001, & scores of other places; the research is headed by John P. Reganold. The study showed that organic orchards were furthermore more sustainable economically as well as environmentally; that apples were easiest to test but the findings are being found applicable to other orchard & vineyard settings in the midwest & east as well. This study is presently in its Eighth Year (the NATURE article was its sixth year); the Washington State University Cooperative Extension Bulletin provides periodic updates on the ongoing research, & growers magazines report on it reliably -- growers are definitely following the techniques developed at WSU & MSU. There can't be anyone left with a serious interest in orchards unaware of it. I don't subscribe to NATURE and living in Illinois, I haven't any contact with Washington State U. or MSU. They found some organic methods such as use of weed tarps to be costly or difficult, so not everything organic was equally good. Their findings are going into practical use every year -- doing away with organic methods that are worthless, devising better time-tables & methods for what works best organically. Research involves a great deal about the role of insect life in a healthy organic orchard -- anyone using pesticides is just not going to be even close, & morons who use NEEM oil & then complain organic alternatives leave the fruit sticky are such profound morons it's surprising they can use a computer to type such silliness on UseNet, since that shows no knowledge of organic gardening beyond what can be read off a bottle of whatever can be purchased at Home Depot. There is an ongoing learning curve on what works best -- but already it's working out way better than with chemicals. If you care about an orchard, you will aprise yourself of it even if you must continue hate paghat's guts for daring to be smarter than you are & impatient with you about it. Boy, don't anyone question your opinion about yourself. Some techniques such as hand-thinning were more labor intensive than the chemical method, but the extra labor was STILL less expensive than chemical methods so in final analysis organic was more profitable as well as more effective. Similiar research is ongoing at Michigan State University Agricultural Experimental Station, who've gotten the same findings for the midwest I checked out MSU Experimental Station and they are indeed looking at better organic methods, but they are also dealing with pesticides. Check this from their latest web site posting: http://web4.msue.msu.edu/msuewc/clar...ocumentID=1010 where they talk about the best way to use pesticides to control Codling Moths. . As I already pointed out, apple maggot is VERY manageable without chemicals -- it does require rigorous clean-up, but if there is no rotten fruit left on the ground in which worms overwinter, there will be no first-generation population to emerge in spring; That might work for your orchard, but you can't control your neighbors yards, so for now, pesticides are the only method that really controls them. further, sustaining meadowlands near orchards increases the beneficial insect population, the predators such as wasps being SIGNAL to a successful pest-free organic orchard, & anyone boasting of killing all the wasps is of course much lower on the awareness ladder than a baboon's handful of colon apples. The project is titled "Ecology Research & Education in Production of Michigan Organic Apples" with regular reports in FUTURES: MSU Agricultural Experiemental Station Bulletin (some issues you can download as PDF files if you can't leave your computer for anything). The organic orchards are coming out ahead in the three major areas investigated: soil quality, fruit quality, & marketability. Plus MSU's project has established conclusively that chemicals are not needed for apple storage. They have developed 100% organic means to control apple scald, so that the three-million spent annually to treat apples with DPA is money saved, besides that much smaller chemical-load in what we eat. The MSU Fruit School is now producing a generation of midwest agriculturalists who will be MUCH smarter than the previous generation. These aren't just ****wad liberals & commies as the anti-organic brigade of chemical-swilling loons promulgates. Agricultural schools are notoriously conservative & difficult to move from old positions. This position, however, was just too unquestionably the better direction, & even a way to stop farms from failing. The only ones fighting against organic orchards right now are the manufacturers of all those unnecessary toxins. Similar studies are being undertaken by Cornell University for vineyards, with once again the same findings. A vast array of articles in ORGANIC GRAPE & WINE PRODUCTION SYMPOSIUM (Cornell University, 1995), & many more vagrant articles in numerous agricultural journals. There are more such studies up the wazoo. If I seem to be impatient with chemical sucking DORKS who're constitutionally incapable of hearing the facts, it's because this is not rare information. These Dorks are the one's supplying the world with most of it's food. Perhaps you would rather have people starve, like in Africa where insects destroy a good portion of their crops. Go preach your hard-line organics to a bunch of starving people. It takes no special brilliance to figure it out, but it takes a special kind of idiot to refuse to figure it out. It doesn't even take concern for the environment since it's ultimately all self-serving & useful to Numero Uno: Man. I posted all the above early in this thread, & yet you had the audacity to ask that I provide information I already provided, Why should I believe your undocumented references any more than the ones claiming Jesus is from Mars? because your ilk are essentially self-blinded & will never stop coming back at the truth with your prove-it-dipwad-greeny mindset -- it IS proven, if you can neither follow nor tolerate the science that's not my fault, & if you really can't find your way to organic research articles without me mailing them to you, you're hopeless. Just quit spouting articles you can't back up. It makes people think you are making all this stuff up. No reasonable person will deny the value of organic methods, but your claims that it results in superior tasting fruit, etc., are just not true. When someone starts from a position of disbelief that organic is better for humanity & for the environment, when quite obviously it is better, no amount of validating science as to the IMPROVED value of the fruits will ever change what simply started out, & will end as demented thinking. But these are the facts about organic orchards: The SOIL is better maintained by organic principles (chiefly organic composts instead of chemical fertilizers); pest insects & diseases decrease in significance year by year in an orchard organically maintained; fruit improves in flavor in the better-maintained soil of an organic orchard; Maintaining good soil does help, but people were doing that long before organic gardening came along. & harvests are more profitable in the marketplace. Those are not opinions, that is what the science sustains in study after study. What is now known to be true of orchards in general may or may not be equally true of annual crops on a case by case situation; it is true, as it turns out, for potatoes; but most annual crops do not have the dramatic gains orchards acquire from organic methods. So what I've been saying is RADICALLY factual for orchards which exclusively gain by organic methods, even if perhaps less often definitely the case for annual crops. Beyond that, it is also important to not have the chemicals in the food we eat or sprayed all over effecting all life. To me it seems that even the chemical-swilling jerkwads who don't care about the planet should even so want the most flavorful & best fruits & the highest yields for the highest profits -- just being selfish jackasses should be enough to want to do the organic thing because it pays off in every way. But I guess I will just never comprehend the agenda of chemical-swillers, & know only that no one will ever reason people out of positions they never reasoned themselves into. If we stopped spraying insecticides now, we would have a world famine. You should be a little more patient with your campaign. So I post what is good news & merely fact, & a couple complete asses post baseless unutterable nonsense about killing beneficial insects being a good thing & chemicals being absolutely NECESSARY or the bugs will destroy all the apples on earth. The "excuses" against organic orchards have been all been red herrings. The demand that I provide citations (when I've been the only one all along who provided any) come from jackasses who have none of their own. If I'm not endlessly gentlehearted toward dumbasses it's because I see close-to-hand the sorry effects of what chemical-swillers destroy. Not just as a statistical fact, not just as a theory or possibility for a destroyed future world. I live near Hood Canal, a DEAD waterway, dead TODAY, dead for NO OTHER REASON than gardening chemicals used by waterfront homeowners on their lawns & gardens, so that chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, & all manner of chemistry washes into the water right off the lawns & gardens of waterfront homes. Like everything else, pesticides can be misused. I am old enough to remember there was good fishing in the Hood Canal, & it was also home to giant octopi, & sea otters. My aunt owned a cabin on the Hood before it became a hundred miles of mansions, & what beauty it was. Now, DEAD. Just de-oxygenated depths of sal****er that cannot sustain an ecosystem. People who live on the Hood Canal demand the government do something about it -- but this is one thing that can't be placed on the WHite House stoop as one more evil deed of a sucky president. If chemical gardening was banned along the Hood Canal it would recover. Alas, that simple response will never happen. Because assholes are incapable of acting even in their own self-interest, since they'd first & foremost have to stop being assholes. Such assholes always have an excuse why it doesn't apply to you; or they in particular can't do it for this or that imaginary-sound reason; & when each excuse turns out to be provably false, you come up with another equally fraudulant excuse. I've known people intent on suicide who thought exactly the same way -- for every good reason to live they have a not-so reply. One last word of advise. Maybe if you toned down your language, people would start listening to you. By the way, how did you ever get a name like 'ratgirl'? Sherwin Dubren -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 |
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#28
01-09-2004, 01:59 PM
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On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 05:41:21 GMT, sherwindu opined:
(...) I will repeat myself again by saying the best tasting fruit varieties are not grown by organic gardeners because of their susceptibility to attack. I grow a Williams Pride Apple because it is a disease resistant variety and a nice early apple, but it doesn't taste as good as a Cox's Orange Pippen or a Hudson Golden Gem. Your State of Washington is known for it's large production of 'Red Delicious' Apples. This is an almost tasteless fruit that only sells because it is large, bright red, and holds up well from orchard to market place. Many people are getting into organic growing not because of their love of the environment, but because of the profit motive. They have scared people to death about getting cancer from chemicals, and know they can charge big bucks if they just stick the 'organic' label on their produce. Excuse me, but organic growers are known for growing varieties which are disease and pest resistant. It's part of the holistic approach to organic growing. I have only tasted bad 'Delicious' apples when they were woody or lay around too long, other than that, they are superior in taste, IMO, to many other varieties of eating apples. You are also incorrect about "profit motive" since many organic farms are very small, and sell their produce at farmers markets, not on grocery shelves. I have news, the grocery stores hike up the prices, not the growers. For instance, bananas. If you see the word organic on a banana, it's generally a useless term. Bananas normally never need pesticides to produce. In the case of organic bananas, they are grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers. The store hikes up the price because they are in their special organic section. I shop either at the farmers market, or Whole Foods Market and their prices are maybe 5% more than commercially grown foods, which use pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. I know because Whole Foods Market also sells conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, so I see the price side by side in many cases. Oh, yes, people indeed DO get cancer from the chemicals being used. But since the toxin developers are in bed with politicians, not much will be done about it, at least till we get a different administration. AND, in one month, to take this to another level, you'll once again be able to buy an AK47. Good morning sunshine. Need a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for yourself or a friend? http://www.animaux.net/stern/present.html |
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#29
01-09-2004, 07:09 PM
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In article , sherwindu
wrote: If we stopped spraying insecticides now, we would have a world famine. Provide a REAL citation for that fatuous chemical industry propoganda slogan, the blurting out of which indicates nothing but that you're a hopeless case. You demanded citations from me & got them though obviously you never really wanted them & still could not care any less about the truth. You persist in this kind of merely political myth-making -- still being that suicidal nutcase who no matter how many reasons to live he is given, always has one more excuse why you should even so shoot yourself in the head, taking down as many others as with you as you can. Your knowledge of the causes of famine is way down there in the zero range with much else you've been mistaken about this week. Get this if you get nothing else: Chemical dependency leads to environmental degradation leads to famine. Organic farming is sustainable. I will follow up with my usual complete overview, but if you're capable of learning, all you need is the above two sentences to be much less foolish than you've been up to now. In some regions starvation has resulted because the best land has been turned over to coffee bean production or sugar cane or some similar crop to be shipped to the west, all land & profits gained by the land belonging to a ruling wealthy minority, & no aerable land is available to peasants. In other places it is due to patterns of drought & cataclysmic climate changes such as the expansion of the Sahara. In others it is due exclusively to warfare or to scorched-earth campaigns. In others it is due to concentrations of populations due to migration to finite areas, resulting from drought & desert expansion or even more commonly from warfare. In the distant past there have been famines caused by dependency on single crops & those single crops became diseased, & there is some worry that this may recur in the future due to agribusiness's reliance on decreasing numbers of species & strains of those species. In India which many years ago undertook an unfortunate transition toward chemical dependency for nationalistic reasons has increased the amount of land that can no longer be farmed at all because toxic salts have built up from continuous use of chemical boosters & pesticides -- this land is being abandoned by rich agriculturalists but it is no longer useful for peasants to farm. So there are many causes of famine. Organic farming has never been one of them. As reported by the Soil Association in SOIL: The Importance & Protection of Living Soil (2001), chemical & biotech dependent crops have been leaching soil to death, & are will lead to famine. They recommend a return, in both Europe & Africa, to organic farming methods which are the only sustainable methods in the long run, besides producing a higher quality of produce in the short run. Even if SOME crops could be increased with chemical dependency, that issue has no relevance in improverished parts of the globe which cannot afford the chemicals. Whereas improving upon their own traditional methods can increase crop yields 200 to 300% without resorting to chemicals. While chemical fertilizers & pesticides deplete soil over time & kill its essential living microorganisms, improving organic methods increases soil richness & increases microorganism population, hence SUSTAINABLE increases in crop production WITHOUT chemicals. While the CHEMICAL and BIOTECH (GM) companies have undertaken a world-wide campaign to promote the idea that organic growers in Europe & the USA are "criminal" for turning more & more to organic farming, because they could otherwise be growing much more chemical-dependent crops & send the excess to famine-stricken countries. This of course is completely fatuous since growers in the west can even be paid to grow NOTHING due to overproduction driving costs down. At any hour, this very hour, world hunger would end if all it took was to distribute more food from the west to countries where drought or warfare or peasant lack of access to aerable land has caused starvation. Blaming organic gardening for any of it is on the surface completely loony -- you swallowed it because you already convinced yourself of a lie before someone handed you a greater lie to reinforce your first one. The reality is that organic farming for orchard crops & many annuyal crops produces the same or more produce than chemical dependent farming, does so more cheaply, in a manner that protects the soil for future crops. Even those annual crops that CAN be increased in yield with chemical dependency deplete soil at such a rapid rate that land is soon depleted; in Brazil the answer to this problem is to take a load of chemicals deeper into the jungle, slash & burn so that nothing of the jungle remains, & start over with a very few years of high-yield crops ending in land that can never be used again. The chemical biotech industrialists expertly trumpet "High Yield Non-Organic Farming" with no underlying science to support what is purely a POLITICAL campaign so that a very few biotech & chemical giants can control the production of food in third-world countries. In villages where traditional methods are still practiced, yields are low but meet the local needs. When it becomes necessary to buy chemical fertilizers & pesticides or special herbicide-resistant grains, the expectation is not to feed people better but to have a salable excess beyond local need; unfortunately, even if "greed is good" it is not good in this situation. Profitable excess never happens in regions where the main feature to overcome is limited water resources. Even in the fewer cases where profitable short-range profits do occur from momentary high yelds, the soil is rapidly depleted & the short-range gain ends in long-run losses -- & famine. By then the soil may take years to restore if it ever is restored, & the interuption in the use of traditional methods results in extinction of sustainable seed strains, making it difficult to return to the sustainable organic methods. As oil-based products skyrocket in price, chemical-dependent crops become less & less economically feasible. There are no chemical-dependent farming methods that have ever been shown to increase production in regions with limited water resources, & if the Hopi became non-organic farmers tomorrow, their corn strains would soon become extinct. And indeed, one of Monsanto's great goals is to drive desert-hardy, fertile, & sustainable corn crop strains to extinction, in favor of their own seed alleged to provide super-crops (impossible in desert conditions) which produce crops that are sterile so that no percentage of the seed can be held back for future crops. The purpose is NOT being to feed starving people but to make starving people perpetually dependent on agribusiness for their seed. No cash for the next year's seed, say hello to famine. The governments of Kenya , Uganda & Tanzsania, in order to fight famine by the best means, have undertaken nations-wide campaigns to re-establish & upgrade sustainable organic farming methods. The chemical companies' successful intrusions to do away with organic farming practices have been a direct contributor to the destruction of croplands. The BETTER system would have been, & still is, to share advances in organic methods that may improve on localized primitive agricultural systems without doing away with those traditional systems. Just one example: the use of compost toilets can make an entire village a source of organic fertilizer, breaking the cycle of dependency on chemical fertilizer to prop up depleted soils; the use of the organic compost will reverse soil depletion caused by the use of chemicals, thus resulting in better more sustainable produce. Every problem has an organic answer that in every case does indeed turn out to be the superior choice. -paghat the ratgirl some random quotes from others: "If you apply organic principles and you take care of the soil in the proper way, you can very much increase your yield. This is the most sustainable way, not only for the export market but also for food security." [Thomas Cierpka, executive director, International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements] "Contrary to what its opponents sometimes suggest, organic farming is not in the least anti-science and looks to biological science particularly for assistance in dealing with fertility, crop pests and diseases. Although research institutes in Europe have done much pioneering work and several new centres are coming on-stream, Cuba probably has more scientific resources employed in organic farming research than the rest of the world combined. It had to - otherwise there could have been famine back in the '90s when it was largely abandoned by its major supporter, the USSR." [Grace Maher, Agriculture & the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Sept 2002] "Output levels in organic farming can match and exceed that of chemical farming - eg see Teagasc, Johnstown Castle, recent report. And where they don't, decent research funds would undoubtedly raise productivity. There are many more studies - I'd be glad to cite them if requested. But, at a practical level, take even my own humble case; I grow garlic, organically, about 40,000 plants, and get yields over 100% more than the European commercial average. Furthermore, a study I made on potatoes shows, remarkably, that modern agriculture still hasn't equalled the output levels achieved in Ireland before the 1840's Famine. .... Chemical farming has left us a legacy of a degraded environment, mountains and lakes of surplus produce, factory farming of animals, decreased employment and profits in agriculture, and, of course, food contamination. Directly add the costs of these effects to our conventional food (which we pay for indirectly anyway) and we'll see the real price of food. The men in white coats are scraping the bottom of the barrel for arguments to bolster a losing case. Again, a pro-GM scientist (Conference on GM food, Skibbereen, Feb '99 ) said - almost with a giggle! -* that, 'organic potatoes are poisonous and you organic farmers here should throw them all away.'" [Jim O'Connor, Ireland, from a widely circulated letter in the Irish Times] -- "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 |
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#30
01-09-2004, 08:22 PM
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Larry Blanchard wrote in message ...
In article , simy1@my- deja.com says... I do believe that things are different in different parts of the country. On the west coast, I have seen unsprayed plum and apple trees from Seattle to the Bay Area (including Portland and Eugene) producing prolifically. In the Bay Area itself, I have seen countless citrus, also unsprayed. Many years ago, I moved from Louisville KY to Los Angeles. The "natives" would ask me what was the biggest change, expecting me to rave about the climate, the cultural stuff, etc.. My answer was always the same "You don't have any bugs!". So yes, things do vary from one part of the country to another. So does the variety of yellow jackets and their agressiveness :-). When I lived in California, perhaps one mile from my place there was an abandoned Red Delicious orchard. It kept pumping out, year after year, the sweetest apples I have ever eaten. They were too sweet, in fact (I much prefer the tart, complex northern varieties, such as Northern Spy or Liberty. And even when it comes to sweet apples, the Michigan Golden Delicious are superior to anything I have tried). No bugs, no blemishes, no spray, no irrigation (no rain for five months before harvest) or fertilization. Incredible. It would take minutes to go there and pick a bushel for the week (I am much the fruitarian in season, ten apples a day is not too much if they are at their top). |
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