In article ,
sherwindu wrote:

Billy Rose wrote:

In article ,
Ann wrote:

Billy Rose expounded:

In article ,
sherwindu wrote:

Sherwin

Dumber than dirt. I'll try to expand on that tomorrow. Actually, that
was an insult to dirt. Dirt's OK. I like dirt. But find out what Shirwin
ate because he is really dumb.

- Billy
Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

He's never going to give up the chemicals,

Never said that.

and he rants on and on at
anyone who suggests things can be grown without them. Makes me think
he's a sill for Monsanto.

Wrong again.

Maybe he's the reincarnation of John Riley
from Oz gasp!

I'm with you Ann. Too many posers in the NG claim that reality is the
way they say it is and, they start disparaging you, if you disagree with
them.

Go back and read the thread and see who started using the dispariging
language
like 'chemical head', etc.



Well let's try to fill in this gaping hole of ignorance. Referring to
Earthbound Farms (which Michael Pollan found to be one of the success
stories in organic farming) in the Monterey Valley in California. If
everyone will open their copy of Omnivore's Dilemma and turn to page
165, from the top read:

into a mosaic of giant color blocks: dark green, burgundy, pale green,
blue green. As you get closer you see that the blocks are divided into a
series of eighty-inch-wide raised beds thickly planted with a single
variety. Each weed-free strip is as smooth and flat as a tabletop,
leveled with a laser so that the custom-built harvester can snip each
leaf at precisely the same point. Earthbound's tabletop fields exemplify
one of the most powerful industrial ideas: the tremendous gains in
efficiency to be had when you can conform the irregularity of nature to
the precision and control of a machine.
Apart from the much. higher level of precision-time as well as space are
scrupulously managed on this farm-the organic practices at Earthbound
resemble those I saw at Greenways farm. Frequent tilling is used to
control weeds, though crews of migrant workers, their heads wrapped in
brightly colored cloths against the hot sun, do a last pass
through each block before harvest, pulling weeds by hand. To provide
fertility-the farm's biggest expense-compost is trucked in; some crops
also receive fish emulsion along with their water and a side dressing of
pelleted chicken manure. Over the winter a cover crop of legumes is
planted to build up nitrogen in the soil.
To control pests, every six or seven strips of lettuce is punctuated
with a strip of flowers: sweet alyssum, which attracts the lacewings and
syrphid flies that eat the aphids that can molest lettuces. Aside from
some insecticidal soap to control insects in the cruciferous crops,
pesticides are seldom sprayed. We prefer to practice resistance and
avoidance," Drew Goodman explained. Or, as their farm manager put it,
"You have to give up the macho idea that you can grow anything you want
anywhere you want to." So they closely track insect or disease outbreaks
in their many fields and keep vulnerab1e crops at a safe distance; they
also search out varieties with a strong natural resistance. Occasionally
they'll lose a block to a pest, but as a rule growing baby greens is
less risky since, by definition, the crop stays in the ground for so
short a period of time-usually thirty days or so. Indeed, baby lettuce
is one crop that may well be easier to grow organically than
conventionally: Harsh chemicals can scorch young leaves, and nitrogen
fertilizers render lettuces more vulnerable to insects. It seems the
bugs are attracted to the' free nitrogen in their leaves, and because of
the more rapid growth of chemically nourished plants, insects find their
leaves easier to pierce.

Everyone read again from Harsh Chemicals. This should give pause to
chemical heads that grow produce (in situ or in vitro).

--------

OK. That was the tease.

Open you Omnivore's Dilemma again to page 179 and read from the top:

"The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary Glickman said. "It is
not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment
about nutrition or quality."
Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. A study by
University of California-Davis researchers published in the Journal of
Agriculture and Food Chemistry in 2003 described an experiment in which
identical varieties of corn, strawberries, and blackberries grown in
neighboring plots using different methods (including organically and
conventionally) were compared for levels of vitamins and polyphenols.
Polyphenols are a group of secondary metabolites manufactured by plants
that we've recently learned play an important role in human health and
nutrition. Many are potent antioxidants; some play a role in preventing
or fighting cancer; others exhibit antimicrobial properties. The Davis
researchers found that organic and otherwise sustainably grown fruits
and vegetables contained significantly higher levels of both ascorbic
acid (vitamin C) and a wide range of polyphenols.
The recent discovery of these secondary metabolites in plants has ought
our understanding of the biological and chemical complexity of foods to
a deeper level of refinement; history suggests we haven't gotten
anywhere near the bottom of this question, either. The first level was
reached early in the nineteenth century with the identification of the
macronutrients-protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Having isolated
these compounds, chemists thought they'd unlocked the key to human
nutrition. Yet some people (such as sailors) living on diets rich in
macronutrients nevertheless got sick. The mystery was solved when
scientists discovered the major vitamins-a second key to human
nutrition. Now it's the polyphenols in plants that we're learning play a
critical role in keeping us healthy. (And which might explain why diets
heavy in processed food fortified with vitamins still aren't as
nutritious as fresh foods.) You wonder what else is going on in these
plants, what other undiscovered qualities in them we've evolved to
depend on.
In many ways the mysteries of nutrition at the eating end of the food
chain closely mirror the mysteries of fertility at the growing end: The
two realms are like wildernesses that we keep convincing ourselves our
chemistry has mapped, at least until the next level of complexity comes
into view. Curiously, Justus von Liebig, the nineteenth-century
German chemist with the spectacularly ironic surname, bears
responsibility for science's overly reductive understanding of both ends
of the food chain. It was Liebig, you'll recall, who thought he had
found the chemical key to soil fertility with the discovery of NPK, and
it was the same Liebig who thought he had found the key to human
nutrition when identified the macronutrients in food. Liebig wasn't
wrong on either count, yet in both instances he made the fatal mistake
of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all
we need to know to keep them healthy. It's a mistake we'll probably keep
repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food a
soil and, perhaps, the links between the two.
But back to the polyphenols, which may him' at the nature of that link.
Why in the world should organically grown blackberries or corn contain
significantly more of these compounds? The authors of Davis study
haven't settled the question, but they offer two suggest theories. The
reason plants produce these compounds in the first place is to defend
themselves against pests and diseases; the more press from pathogens,
the more polyphenols a plant will produce. These compounds, then, are
the products of natural selection and, more specifically, the
coevolutionary relationship between plants and the species that prey on
them. Who would have guessed that humans evolved to profit from a diet
of these plant pesticides? Or that we would invent an agriculture that
then deprived us of them? The Davis authors hypothesize that plants
being defended by man-made pesticides don't need to work as hard to make
their own polyphenol pesticides. Coddled by us and our chemicals, the
plants see no reason to invest their sources in mounting a strong
defense. (Sort of like European nations during the cold war.)
A second explanation (one that subsequent research seems to suppport)
may be that the radically simplified soils in which chemically
fertilized plants grow don't supply all the raw ingredients needed to
synthesize these compounds, leaving the plants more vulnerable to
attack, as we know conventionally grown plants tend to be. NPK might
be sufficient for plant growth yet still might not give a plant
everything it needs to manufacture ascorbic acid or lycopene or
resveratrol in quantity. As it happens, many of the polyphenols (and
especially a sublet called the flavonols) contribute to the
characteristic taste of a fruit or vegetable. Qualities we can't yet
identify, in soil may contribute qualities we've only just begun to
identify in our foods and our bodies.
Reading the Davis study I couldn't help thinking about the early
proponents of organic agriculture, people like Sir Albert Howard and J.
I. Rodale, who would have been cheered, if unsurprised, by the findings.
Both men were ridiculed for their unscientific conviction that a
reductive approach to soil fertility-the NPK mentality-would diminish
the nutritional quality of the food grown in it and, in turn, the health
of the people who lived on that food. All carrots are not created equal,
they believed; how we grow it, the soil we grow it in, what we feed that
soil all contribute qualities to a carrot, qualities that may yet escape
the explanatory net of our chemistry. Sooner or later the soil
scientists and nutritionists will catch up to Sir Howard, heed his
admonition that we begin "treating the whole problem of health in soil,
plant, animal and man as one great subject."

-------

I think I'll go pet my earthworms now.

Seems like you have done a lot of research, but you can't convince me
that
if we leave plants alone, they will find a way to defend themselves, so
we
are
retarding their own efforts by substituting chemicals to do it for them.
If
what
you say is true, I will just continue to drink lot's of orange juice and
take my
daily multi-vitamin, and grow the kinds of things I like.

Sherwin

I'd suggest that you reread this at least twice more. I only say that
because when I was a college student, it took three times to get all the
ramifications. Fast is good. Thorough is better.

An ignorant person is someone who doesn't know what you just learned.
- Will Rogers

- Billy
Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

In article ,
jangchub wrote:

Surprise!!!! My garden is in balance and I have tolerance for some
damage. Subsequently, I have minimal damage. I use one of the
largest producers of grapes for wine is Gallo in California. They've
been organic for decades. Do you thing it would still be organic if
no profit was made?
Gallo is huge. They can give their wine away and make money on their
glass bottles. Organic for a decade maybe, on the tiniest fraction of
their wine. IMHO a marketing ploy. They are having an identity crisis
ever since their label designer told them that the main problem with
their label was the name, "Gallo".

Don't get locked into a label. Every year the wine changes. Last year's
great wine is this year's ho-hum. There are lots of good cheap wines out
there. Cheap is where Gallo came in but they have ambition$. If I buy a
wine for $5 and it's bad, I'll either add Canada Dry to it for a cooler
or cook with it. If I spend $20 for a bottle of wine and it's bad, I'm
inconsolable. Find a good cheap wine and buy as many cases as you can.
Spending more than $10/bottle just shows you have more money than sense.

Chateau Ausone sells for $750/bottle. It would just be your luck that
your bottle was "corked".

So if you find that, indeed, you are an idiot for buying an expensive
wine that is bad, don't feel bad. There are lots of others out there
with you.

- Billy
Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

On Jun 16, 12:35 am, Charlie wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:53:17 -0500, sherwindu
wrote:





Ann wrote:

sherwindu expounded:

First of all, using language like 'chemical head' shows your stupidity and
adolescence,
although I think your age is well beyond that.

Sticks and stones and all that. Unless the shoe fits....
Your whole premise is that organic methods
can take over from chemical ones and do an adequate job.

That's not just my premise, that's my experience.

If they tried that
today,
millions of people would starve around the world.

Oh, not that again. How did the world make it to the 40's, when your
chemical pushing buddies took over commercial agriculture?

I don't think horse manure
and
other organic fertilizers cost any more than chemical ones. Your logic is
flawed and
the organic farmers just love the way you shop.

First of all it isn't just horse manure (that's actually pretty low
quality manure, cow is better, whihch just goes to show that you don't
know shit). And I'm glad they're happy with how I shop, that'll
encourage them to grow even more. Do you understand economics? If
they grow more, prices will come down. And they have. I've been
buying organic ever since organic has been available (when I don't
have my own organically-grown produce to pick out of my own garden)
and I've seen the prices come down.

The organic farmers are just
now
making some headway in their efforts, but they have a ways to go. I know that
with
apples, they are restricted to mostly average tasting varieties. They still
have not come
up with an apple that resists fungus and disease and yet tastes great. As for
organic insect
protection of apples, it's marginal, at best.

Sez you, Sherwindu, and you have little credibility with me, because
my personal experience tells me otherwise..

You rant and rave about chemicals, but give no examples of how good your apples,
etc.
taste when grown purely organic. I will stick with chemicals when I need them
to allow
me to grow the kinds of fruit I like. Really, I'm not interested in
establishing credibility
with you. By the way Annbal, the name is sherwin, not sherwindu, or chemical
head.

--
Ann, gardening in Zone 6a
South of Boston, Massachusetts
e-mail address is not checked
******************************

Ok.....sherwin.......what does du stand for ........depleted uranium?
Now *there* is a good chemical, eh? Lots of good uses for it. All
designed to kill.

It's all about taste, eh? I hope you enjoy the *taste* of your apples
as you , and others of your ilk, are poisoning my unborn grandchildren.

And your own.

Most people are ignorant of what poison does to developing fetuses,
many people are aware of what it does, that's why we decry the use of
poisons. It is despicable that you will advocate for the use of
poison, simply for a better tasting apple, screw the unborn and the
children and the rest of us. This shows that you don't care about
anything other than your own pleasure. You don't care about my
grandson, my grandson about to be born, and my granddaughter to be born
this fall.

Charlie

Gee, Charlie; who shit in your Berkies?

Shame on you, Sherwin, for poising his / her (haven't been here long
enough to study biographies) grandchildren. How did you ever find
out where they lived?

And you don't care about anything other than your own pleasure.
Bad, bad Sherwin.
You don't care about whether the Patriots have a chance this year, or
if Paris Hilton will survive jail, or if Hillary uses spray or stick
deodorant.
I'll bet you don't even care about your own kids and grandkids, that
all your talk about your gardens is just a way to weasel your way into
this ever so tolerant group and participate in a discussion -- how
insensitive.

shame, shame

oz, admiring the inclusiveness herein

In article . com,
MajorOz wrote:

oz, admiring the inclusiveness herein

Now ain't you an odd duck?
--
Billy
Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

On Jun 17, 10:58 pm, Charlie wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:57:01 -0700, MajorOz
wrote:



Gee, Charlie; who shit in your Berkies?

Shame on you, Sherwin, for poising his / her (haven't been here long
enough to study biographies) grandchildren. How did you ever find
out where they lived?

And you don't care about anything other than your own pleasure.
Bad, bad Sherwin.
You don't care about whether the Patriots have a chance this year, or
if Paris Hilton will survive jail, or if Hillary uses spray or stick
deodorant.
I'll bet you don't even care about your own kids and grandkids, that
all your talk about your gardens is just a way to weasel your way into
this ever so tolerant group and participate in a discussion -- how
insensitive.

shame, shame

oz, admiring the inclusiveness herein

Uhhhh......ok

Seems like this could go a coupla ways...not sure about yer intent.
Not even sure what you mean.

Let's go thisaway......I will assume that you are comin' down on the
side of sustainable and organic and heirlooms all that fine thing. I
will assume that someone who is a pickin' and a grinnin' at Jere's
Place would feel that way.

Charlie

I will type really slowly.........

I am coming down (in an apparently unsuccessful attempt at humor) on
the hysteria directed at anyone who fails to spout the party line.
What I think about organic (and I go that way when I can) is not
germane.
I just think people foaming at the mouth -- about anything, even
something I espouse -- are either damaged in some fundamental way, or
are part of the tin helmet brigade.
It is my sacred duty to point and laugh.

cheers

oz

In article .com,
MajorOz wrote:

I will type really slowly.........

I am coming down (in an apparently unsuccessful attempt at humor) on
the hysteria directed at anyone who fails to spout the party line.
What I think about organic (and I go that way when I can) is not
germane.
I just think people foaming at the mouth -- about anything, even
something I espouse -- are either damaged in some fundamental way, or
are part of the tin helmet brigade.
It is my sacred duty to point and laugh.

cheers

oz

Now the problem, as I see it, is that while the the level of passion
for one's point of view, may at times be intense enough to inspire
mockery, satirization, or derision, the currency for admittance among
the adults at the table is the assertion of a point of view supported by
the presentation of studies, records, or at the very least, an inference
arrived at through a premise and a chain of logic, that support a
particular point of view. Which Charlie has done on numerous occassions.
If you would care to join the adult conversation, please state your
position and the facts that you have to support it. Maybe you'd prefer
to be a Socratic gadfly, fine, make your observation and justify how you
arrived at it. If you just want to be disruptive by putting walnuts in
your cheeks and rolling around on the floor making shrieking sounds or
babbling like a fool, you can go sit in the corner with the other
trolls. Now shuss.
--
Billy
Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)