Organic Gardening

Having just escaped from a long argument in another LJ with the kind of person who valued opinion over fact (and refused even to state her opinion half the time - for reasons that were dead easy to spot - she was the kind of person who called the UK out for not treating babies born so premature that the had no real chance of survival, but was naturally opposed to spending state money to save poor American babies), it has been a real relief to start reading a book by Jeff Gillman, an excellent American writer

"The Truth about Organic Gardening" is a book that deals in facts. Gillman isn't partisan - if an organic practice is good, he'll say so. If a non-organic practice is good, he'll say so. He's a solid background in teaching and researching horticulture and if he says something, it means he's checked it out and isn't just saying it because he wants it to be true. For instance, when looking at herbicides and pesticides, he considers them on their individual merits. He points out that some synthetic pesticides are very dangerous and some are very safe; likewise organic pesticides vary in their safety (he considers rotenone to be very dangerous).

'Natural' does not mean 'safe to humans'.

Gillman also discusses other methods of pest control - his favourite approach of standing back and doing nothing has a lot going for it. He points out that if plants are well watered and fertilised, then they can afford to lose about a third of their leaf area without suffering great harm and that their natural resistance is higher when they're well looked after.

He's got a good sense of humour. When he talks about controlling Japanese beetles (an American pest, so not directly relevant to the UK, but still interesting to read about), he talks about pheromone traps. He rates them as ineffective - because there are so many of the beetles, even though the trap kills a lot of them it also attracts more into the neighbourhood. He suggests giving a trap to someone you dislike and watch as their garden fills up with beetles!

The book looks at many areas of organic practice (and Gillman is fair to point out that some of these techniques are used by non-organic gardeners as well) from green manures to bird control.

For each practice/technique, Gillman spends a page or so discussing it, then neatly sums up the pros and cons in bullet points at the end. It's a very good format for dipping and browsing and easy to read/extract information on.

He also understands statistics. (You wouldn't believe how rare this is) When discussing the results of a study, he'll point out how much confidence can be placed in the result. (eg. if 4 out of 500 people get cancer during a study of a weedkiller, what is the likelihood this could have happened by chance? Low numbers are subject to wide fluctuations. ie. 4/500 is a lot less reliable data than 16/2000)(and indeed, a later study with 54,000 people did not show any increase in cancer at all for that particular weedkiller). He's also concerned that studies are often not carried out on organic pesticides/weedkillers because they are assumed to be safer. But rotenone (which is natural) kills just as many fish and frogs as glyphosphate (which is synthetic).

I'd recommend this as an interesting book for anyone who wants to know the pros and cons of different gardening techniques and likes to have some data to support the opinions of the writer. This is NOT a 'how to do organic gardening' book, but it is a good unbiased study of what works and what is safe.



Where do I stand on the organic front?

I garden organically to a large extent. I do this to minimise the harm to wildlife and also to maximise my crops. I won't use slug pellets of any kind becasue they kill thrushes. I don't use pesticides because I'm wary of spraying anything that I might breathe. I quite enjoy weeding (It's relaxing) but I use glyphosphate on bindweed because there's no other way to kill it and glyphosphate is inactivated when it hits the soil. I add compost and manure in large quantities to my soil (You should see this year's leeks! They got the compost heap added to the patch not long before we planted them.)

In short, I'm an organic gardener, but not to the point of fanaticism.  There are some 'organic' products containing copper that I'm not very keen on, but there are some organic practices - like watering with dilute urine - that I've had really good results with (excellent onions this year) and I'm positively evangelical about.

Getting things done - Raspberries

The vertigo has eased off a lot recently (fingers crossed) and I'm able to do a lot more.  My wrist (that I hurt five or six weeks ago) is almost recovered and I'm finally starting to get back to that dimly recalled thing called 'reality'.

Massive backlog of jobs on the allotment, but I've managed to go down for a while every day for the last four days.  My work capacity (measured in 'buckets of weeds' seems to be improving a little each day).

I've now weeded all round the beetroot and am starting round the leeks. Those leeks are seriously big, especially considering the skinny little things we dropped into the holes when we transplanted them.  Definitely a testament to all the compost we dug in before transplanting them.

I've also started work on the summer fruiting raspberries.

If you have summer fruiting raspberries (defined as ones that have finished fruiting by now, in the south at any rate), then sometime during the next few months, you need to do the following:

1.  Cut out all the canes that have borne fruit. Cut them right down to ground level (you can leave an inch or so if it makes the job easier, it won't do any harm)

2.  Look at the canes that are left (the new ones that have grown up this year).  Any that are weak and spindly, cut down to the ground.  Leave the strongest canes only. The weak ones don't bear enough fruit to be worth it and they'll only take light/nutrients from the stronger canes that will bear the decent crop.

3.  If any of your canes are more than four foot tall, then you're going to need to support them - otherwise, the poor things will only flop over when they start having the weight of fruit to support.  The simplest way is to knock in a six/seven  foot post at the end of each row, stretch some gardening wire between them at three and four feet (the height of the wires isn't a precise art.  Look at your canes and pick a couple of heights that make sense for your plants.)  Then use string to tie the canes to the wires.   It will project them from blowing over in strong winds and also stop them going floppy and trying to grow sideways...

4.  If you have a compost heap, spread the cut out canes across it in a loose lattice pattern and pile your weeds on top. The canes help maintain air pockets in the pile and also add carbon to balance the nitrogen in the weeds/grass clippings.  If you have a compost 'dalek', then chop up the canes a bit to get them to fit in.  Because canes are so weak, they rot a lot faster than most woody stuff, so I find them really handy in compost making. 


Autumn fruiting raspberries are fruiting nicely now (yum!) and should keep going for some time.  I'll cover what to do with those later on in the year.