Originally Posted by
Darthtang AW
http:///forum/post/3203690
I am serious, because in my experience every "organic" bug killer or preventer for gardens does do what they are suppossed to do...
Basically I am trying to see how organic food is more efficient to grow than regular...Because I don't see it, maybe AS efficient...but not more efficient.
By more efficient I mean less money spent on chemical fertilizer and pesticides.
Interesting though that you mention organic bug killers, that was not even in my thinking. I was talking more about natural bug eaters.
Basically pesticides are a downward spiral, first they kill everything including good insects that eat the bad, then as the bad bugs build up a resistance to the chemicals used, more must be used every year to achieve the same results which costs more money until you are at the point where you where losing less money from the bugs themselves than what you spent in pesticide. That is not even taking into account what it is doing to the ground water.
I have lots of predators in my garden, lady bugs and bald faced wasps do a great job on aphids and smaller insects, lots of garter snakes which are about the only thing that eat slugs, no overhead water means that spiders can build webs and lots of praying mantis, although I don't claim they are doing that much good because I think they eat everything. Never have any damage from bugs to speak of, although I do get the corn worm, I just snap off the top of the ear. I have some land, so I am not talking about a small garden either, as I said it is large enough to feed us for a good part of the year and every fall we are extremely busy canning and freezing food and summer is a lot of work also planting and picking.
As in a lot of the country we are dealing with a loss of honey bees, this means less pollination for crops, a very simple solution I learned about is just creating habitat for natural pollinators by leaving the edges of fields wild. I took that to heart and instead of mowing to the fence line in my pasture I have let a five foot strip go wild the last couple years. Just mentioning this as a good example of how organic thinking can be a good thing. Another old/new idea some farmers are using around here is letting chickens out at certain times of the year, they are pretty much the perfect thing for helping with organic farming. They eat large amounts of bugs and weed seed, fertilize as they work and when they are done you have one tasty free-range bird for the table.
As you can guess I feel pretty strongly about this stuff, it alll started a long time ago when I had to cut a maple tree down that had fallen in my grandma's yard. She had used every chemical you can think of for about 20 years in her yard and her soil was so contaminated that the tree fell because it would not put its roots out far enough to support itself due to all the chemicals in her soil. That was enough proof to get me thinking organic.
Fishtaco
