The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on
Omar Kahyam
I have stated my position which is what I wanted to do. Nobody out there is going to change that.Go and spend your money on the 'organic' labelled products in your supermarket at twice the regular price, much good may it do you. I just buy local grown sprouts in the market, they are delicious.
E.U Interference!!!*****!!!
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Tony Hague
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"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
-Omar Khayyam
Regarding the use or missuse of the term "Organic". The chemist's definition (a carbon compound) is overly narrow. It comes from the Greek organon, which could be a tool, instrument or organ of a living body. In current usage it often means derived from, or pertaining to, living things. Hence sculpture can have "organic" form. And compost is most definitely "organic" !
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
-Omar Khayyam
Regarding the use or missuse of the term "Organic". The chemist's definition (a carbon compound) is overly narrow. It comes from the Greek organon, which could be a tool, instrument or organ of a living body. In current usage it often means derived from, or pertaining to, living things. Hence sculpture can have "organic" form. And compost is most definitely "organic" !
What a lot of interesting stuff has come up in this debate.
For what it's worth, I garden with no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers. On a small scale, I find the best way to protect my crops is through barriers, so I have lots of Environmesh, which deals with butterflies and carrot fly etc. I know there is lots of whitefly, but I don't actually find it damages the veg much. My bete-noire is that horrid purple aphid which gets in amongst purple sprouting broccoli, but if I kept the mesh on over-winter, I would think it might stop aphis as well, as the mesh is very dense.
The garden and kitchen produce lots of compost which both nourishes the soil and, in our very heavy clay, opens it up and improves the structure. I may have lots of uneatable bits of vegs and leaves (such as huge marrowy courgettes and overblown sprouts) but at least everything goes into the compost heap to provide great material for next year, so nothing is wasted.
I also use timing, so I grow early maincrop spuds, for example, which tend to be out of the ground in mid-August before the blight hits, and you can sow things earlier or later to avoid the main pest period (pea maggots for example).
I do understand that commercial growers might find pest control more difficult without chemicals, but the widespread and growing use of polytunnels presumably could make it easier to avoid cabbage white butterflies et al for organic growers.
I know it is not proven (who will pay for the research?) but my gut feeling is that the massive growth in allergies - many of which are life-threatening and disabling - is at least partially because of all the little bits of this and that ---cides which we ingest with our food. I think they muck around with our immune systems and I don't think it is coincidence that both have increased at the same time.
Alison.
For what it's worth, I garden with no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers. On a small scale, I find the best way to protect my crops is through barriers, so I have lots of Environmesh, which deals with butterflies and carrot fly etc. I know there is lots of whitefly, but I don't actually find it damages the veg much. My bete-noire is that horrid purple aphid which gets in amongst purple sprouting broccoli, but if I kept the mesh on over-winter, I would think it might stop aphis as well, as the mesh is very dense.
The garden and kitchen produce lots of compost which both nourishes the soil and, in our very heavy clay, opens it up and improves the structure. I may have lots of uneatable bits of vegs and leaves (such as huge marrowy courgettes and overblown sprouts) but at least everything goes into the compost heap to provide great material for next year, so nothing is wasted.
I also use timing, so I grow early maincrop spuds, for example, which tend to be out of the ground in mid-August before the blight hits, and you can sow things earlier or later to avoid the main pest period (pea maggots for example).
I do understand that commercial growers might find pest control more difficult without chemicals, but the widespread and growing use of polytunnels presumably could make it easier to avoid cabbage white butterflies et al for organic growers.
I know it is not proven (who will pay for the research?) but my gut feeling is that the massive growth in allergies - many of which are life-threatening and disabling - is at least partially because of all the little bits of this and that ---cides which we ingest with our food. I think they muck around with our immune systems and I don't think it is coincidence that both have increased at the same time.
Alison.
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Cider Boys
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Hello Peter
All my family and my wife’s are Somerset born and bred for generations and I have lived all my life in Somerset and started drinking cyder from about 10 years old. In fact this is the first year for many that we have not yet made our own Cyder due to work pressures. We make cyder in the traditional way with only apple juice and no added yeast or sugars. In fact I am drinking some now as I write that we made last year from the wonderful Morgan Sweet apple. As for the myth that West Country folk are a bit thick, this is of course a widely held belief especially by the ever increasing number of Londoners and Northerners invading our wonderful West Country.
Local West Country people also reckon, ‘you can always tell a Grockle but you can’t tell ‘em much, ‘cause they think they knows it all.
However on a serious note (from the internet):-
For many centuries, a form of madness observed mainly (but not exclusively) in the West of England was attributed to lead poisoning. Cider - an alcoholic drink made from fermented apple juice - was the culprit. The apples were crushed in a wooden press held together with lead plates, fermented in lead vessels and as if that wasn't enough, the resultant cider was often drunk from pewter tankards (pewter is an alloy of lead and tin). Apple juice and cider are both acidic, causing the lead to dissolve slowly under these conditions. Locals of Somerset were found to show symptoms which could be directly traced back to years of low level lead pollution.
Is not lead a natural occurring substance once mined and organic as organic can be, or has the Morgan Sweet got the better of me!
Cheers
Barney
All my family and my wife’s are Somerset born and bred for generations and I have lived all my life in Somerset and started drinking cyder from about 10 years old. In fact this is the first year for many that we have not yet made our own Cyder due to work pressures. We make cyder in the traditional way with only apple juice and no added yeast or sugars. In fact I am drinking some now as I write that we made last year from the wonderful Morgan Sweet apple. As for the myth that West Country folk are a bit thick, this is of course a widely held belief especially by the ever increasing number of Londoners and Northerners invading our wonderful West Country.
Local West Country people also reckon, ‘you can always tell a Grockle but you can’t tell ‘em much, ‘cause they think they knows it all.
However on a serious note (from the internet):-
For many centuries, a form of madness observed mainly (but not exclusively) in the West of England was attributed to lead poisoning. Cider - an alcoholic drink made from fermented apple juice - was the culprit. The apples were crushed in a wooden press held together with lead plates, fermented in lead vessels and as if that wasn't enough, the resultant cider was often drunk from pewter tankards (pewter is an alloy of lead and tin). Apple juice and cider are both acidic, causing the lead to dissolve slowly under these conditions. Locals of Somerset were found to show symptoms which could be directly traced back to years of low level lead pollution.
Is not lead a natural occurring substance once mined and organic as organic can be, or has the Morgan Sweet got the better of me!
Cheers
Barney
That shows how generalising gets you into difficulties.This is where I came in about being better off by judging each decision by itself, not working to a rule as to whether something is chemical Or Organic, natural or manmade, local or foreign. Lead is never found as a metal in its natural state, the only metal found as such is gold and I don't think I ever heard of gold being poisonous therefore one can see a case for being very wary about metallic compounds in excess.We have to have a certain amount of calcium , iron and several other metallic compounds for proper function of the body
If you want to read more, try this website, Metals in health and disease.
http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/stude ... /index.htm
I also made the point that I stick to that there is a threshold below which any poison is safe.
To say that the Organic movement does NOT use the rule that organic is safe, manmade is poisonous is about the biggest reversal that I have ever heard, that one certainly won't wash. It has led them into quandries where exceptions had to be made and they tried renewable or not but that did no better either.
There were claims that Organics would change the world, become the norm, even a move to get a bill through parliament setting out a timetable for conversion to organics. Where are we now. Organic produce is about 5% of the food, much of that imported, in processed foods there is a generous percentage of non-organic ingredients allowed,
Hardly a takeover.
I therefore stick to MY OPINION that we would be better off forgetting about it all and judge each case on its merits.
Perhaps it's about time this discussion returned to its original topic.
If you want to read more, try this website, Metals in health and disease.
http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/stude ... /index.htm
I also made the point that I stick to that there is a threshold below which any poison is safe.
To say that the Organic movement does NOT use the rule that organic is safe, manmade is poisonous is about the biggest reversal that I have ever heard, that one certainly won't wash. It has led them into quandries where exceptions had to be made and they tried renewable or not but that did no better either.
There were claims that Organics would change the world, become the norm, even a move to get a bill through parliament setting out a timetable for conversion to organics. Where are we now. Organic produce is about 5% of the food, much of that imported, in processed foods there is a generous percentage of non-organic ingredients allowed,
Hardly a takeover.
I therefore stick to MY OPINION that we would be better off forgetting about it all and judge each case on its merits.
Perhaps it's about time this discussion returned to its original topic.
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peter
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Allan wrote:The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on
Omar Kahyam
I have stated my position which is what I wanted to do. Nobody out there is going to change that.Go and spend your money on the 'organic' labelled products in your supermarket at twice the regular price, much good may it do you. I just buy local grown sprouts in the market, they are delicious.
Allan, I do not buy organic in the supermarket, in fact I try not to buy any veg in any shop, I try to GROW IT MYSELF, which is one reason I frequent this website and buy the magazine.
Sadly sometimes through ignorance
, pests/diseases, weather 
, or poor timing I fail to grow what I wanted, then I do buy reluctantly english winter veg, lower food miles.
The one exception I will cheerfully admit to buying is frozen peas. I can grow mangetout fine, but a maggot free set of ordinary peas that I can have from idea to table in five minutes.....
As for your fatuous statement "I also made the point that I stick to that there is a threshold below which any poison is safe." well there's an idea for a real-world practical experiment, just keep taking the arsenic old chap and we will see.
What seems to be, as usual, the cause of the argument is a lack of definition of the word "organic" prior to starting to argue about it. If you decide that one group of people hold a different interpretation of the word to your definition, without actually asking them what it is, then you are essentially arguing with yourself about your own predjudices regarding that group of people.
You should try computers and programming or projects, first you define your scope, terms and budgets, then you get them agreed, then you start work.
"Everything is true......
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...for a given value of true."
Apologies to Mr Pratchet for the last.
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Unfortunately the word Organic has already been defined to the specification of SA and made legal, for the commercial world this is binding. However if you don't sell you are free to call you own interpretation in any way you like, and in the hands of the Great British Public it is subjected to further abuse, which reinforces my suggestion of dropping it and starting again. If only the rule had been, not Organic, but use a phrase such as "to Soil Association standards" then everyone would know what was meant.
Before I went into growing mainly for sale I grew my own peas for many years and they were very nice when picked and frozen within a few hours but you cannot make a commercial thing of them on a small scale so I grow other crops to bring in the money and then buy frozen ones. One of my criticisms of Suopermarkets is the way they sell 'fresh' peas, even from Kenya, no good at all.
Before I went into growing mainly for sale I grew my own peas for many years and they were very nice when picked and frozen within a few hours but you cannot make a commercial thing of them on a small scale so I grow other crops to bring in the money and then buy frozen ones. One of my criticisms of Suopermarkets is the way they sell 'fresh' peas, even from Kenya, no good at all.
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Cider Boys
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Hello Allan
In this long rambling thread and whenever the term ‘organic’ as applied to food is brought up on the Forum, I believe your one sentence: ‘If only the rule had been, not organic, but a phrase such as “to Soil Association standards” then everyone would know what was meant’, sums it all up. As I have said before it is the legal monopoly of the definition of a word, which was in existence long before the SA that is totally autocratic and perverse.
I do not understand your earlier statement about lead, surely lead is naturally found in the earth's crust as a bluish-grey metal and was mined as such.
Barney
In this long rambling thread and whenever the term ‘organic’ as applied to food is brought up on the Forum, I believe your one sentence: ‘If only the rule had been, not organic, but a phrase such as “to Soil Association standards” then everyone would know what was meant’, sums it all up. As I have said before it is the legal monopoly of the definition of a word, which was in existence long before the SA that is totally autocratic and perverse.
I do not understand your earlier statement about lead, surely lead is naturally found in the earth's crust as a bluish-grey metal and was mined as such.
Barney
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peter
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Barney, you are a hammer.
Well you have certainly hit the nail on the head.
That would be a much better trademark.
Well you have certainly hit the nail on the head.
That would be a much better trademark.
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Colin Miles
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Hi Peter,
Had to laugh at your statement
'You should try computers and programming or projects, first you define your scope, terms and budgets, then you get them agreed, then you start work.'
Have you ever worked on computer projects!? Start work, you must be joking or have very well trained users.
But this is to go totally off subject!!
As for poisonous dosages, well, a lot depends on whether the body accumulates the poison. If it doesn't, or only excretes it at a rate less than consumption, then obviously it can become a problem. And some 'poisons' in small doses are actually good for you as, it is now suspected, small doses of radiation.
As I said before, modern technology is capable of detecting substances at ever-decreasing amounts. Indeed, it may be questionable now as to whether some of these are 'poisonous' substances would have occurred naturally. And when you think of the situation that has existed in Britain since about the 1750's when it comes to pollution.
Had to laugh at your statement
'You should try computers and programming or projects, first you define your scope, terms and budgets, then you get them agreed, then you start work.'
Have you ever worked on computer projects!? Start work, you must be joking or have very well trained users.
But this is to go totally off subject!!
As for poisonous dosages, well, a lot depends on whether the body accumulates the poison. If it doesn't, or only excretes it at a rate less than consumption, then obviously it can become a problem. And some 'poisons' in small doses are actually good for you as, it is now suspected, small doses of radiation.
As I said before, modern technology is capable of detecting substances at ever-decreasing amounts. Indeed, it may be questionable now as to whether some of these are 'poisonous' substances would have occurred naturally. And when you think of the situation that has existed in Britain since about the 1750's when it comes to pollution.
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peter
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Colin, only for twenty-one years. 
Part of the training is to ensure that the meaning of particular words is clearly understood. Otherwise your users and customers think you are delivering one thing while your team think they are delivering another thing.
Part of the training is to ensure that the meaning of particular words is clearly understood. Otherwise your users and customers think you are delivering one thing while your team think they are delivering another thing.
Do not put off thanking people when they have helped you, as they may not be there to thank later.
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Colin Miles
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Just to add to the comments about 'poisons' I would point to the following.
'WHO promotes indoor spraying with insecticides as one of three main interventions to fight malaria
15 SEPTEMBER 2006 | WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa.'
You can read the full report on the World Health Organisation web page. You can also, if interested, read the link www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm which gives you 100 facts about DDT.
'WHO promotes indoor spraying with insecticides as one of three main interventions to fight malaria
15 SEPTEMBER 2006 | WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa.'
You can read the full report on the World Health Organisation web page. You can also, if interested, read the link www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm which gives you 100 facts about DDT.
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peter
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Colin, I guess that is the lesser of two evils.
Death or disablement by malaria versus possible problem from ddt?
We could get into a whole series of threads on that!
Cost / benefit and risk / benefit analysis.
Death or disablement by malaria versus possible problem from ddt?
We could get into a whole series of threads on that!
Cost / benefit and risk / benefit analysis.
Do not put off thanking people when they have helped you, as they may not be there to thank later.
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Jenny Green
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There seems to be a fair amount of misunderstanding on this thread about the central ideas about organic gardening. It is not, as some have implied, a superstitious fear of 'chemicals' in themselves. Most people who choose to grow organically are well aware that everything can be reduced to its basic chemical composition. We are also well aware that poisonous substances exist in our natural environment.
It is not a simple 'naturally occuring = good for you' and 'artificial = bad for you' equation. This is a simplistic idea and one easy to pick holes in. This does not mean that organic growers are an easy target, it just means that those who try to criticise their ideology are either unknowingly or deliberately misunderstanding it.
For those who are interested in finding out about some central ideas may I suggest you start by looking at these pages:
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/s ... ganic.html
It is not a simple 'naturally occuring = good for you' and 'artificial = bad for you' equation. This is a simplistic idea and one easy to pick holes in. This does not mean that organic growers are an easy target, it just means that those who try to criticise their ideology are either unknowingly or deliberately misunderstanding it.
For those who are interested in finding out about some central ideas may I suggest you start by looking at these pages:
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/s ... ganic.html
(Formerly known as 'Organic Freak')
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
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Colin Miles
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Unfortunately Jenny, for the general population it is very much a superstitious fear of chemicals and a 'naturally occuring = good for you' and 'artificial = bad for you'. Going back to my posting on DDT, I was one of those who read Rachel Carson and believed her. No doubt out of bad science some good came, and in many ways that is what the SA is doing. But, as in many areas of life, the pendulum can swing too far. In particular the idea that all GM is bad, which is another that the general public believes as a result of media propaganda.
But to get back to the original posting, maybe for once the EU has got it right as I swear that my caterpillars love Derris!
But to get back to the original posting, maybe for once the EU has got it right as I swear that my caterpillars love Derris!