Today I reached a crisis point with my
gardening, and I'm going to say something that will instantly
alienate me from most of my peers:
I've just about had it with all this
organic crap.
If you give me just one moment before
you run away screaming "pariah!" I will explain my case.
The Great Gardening Experiment began
last September, when I was feeling particularly ambitious and felt
the ancient draw of raising fragile green things out of the crusty
soil. (Poetry aside, my soil is actually rock-hard-clumpy when dry
and unbelievably sticky when wet. Pretty sure they make modeling
clay out of the stuff in my backyard.) "Let's do a garden, and
let's do it organic!" I exclaimed to Jay, and I checked out an
organic gardening book at the library. The two main things I gleaned
from that book were 1) compost is key and 2) rabbit manure is a
perfect addition to compost. So in another moment of insanity
ambition, I brought home two rabbits.
Let me pause here and give you my
experience with organic farming.
- Everyone says "green" is
healthier, and it probably is.
- Higher-end stores sell organic foods
for higher prices, which we don't buy. (What we spend on guilt is
still less than what we save on the grocery bill.)
- I read that one library book about
organic gardening.
So much for that. Now let me tell you
my experience with chemical farming.
- First of all, I love poison. Growing
up on five wild acres, poison was my family's friend. I'll never
forget the horrible summer when we all had to hoe an acre of
rock-solid ground in the scorching summer heat. The only thing that
got me through that blisterful trauma was my dad's promise, "I'm
going to put pre-emergent down, so we won't have to do this again
next year." Lesson learned: Pre-emergent = less suffering.
- My dad couldn't spread pre-emergent
over the whole five acres though, so he used another chemical to
rescue us from the threat of total weed domination. "I'm going
to spray Round-Up today," Dad would announce, and he'd mix up a
tank, strap it to his back, and wave the magic spray-wand of death
over the targeted areas. For larger-scale assaults, he'd hook a
large tank to the tractor and recruit one of us to drive while he
walked alongside with the magic wand.
- I have other fond memories of poison,
as well. Apparently, five acres of luxurious outdoor living didn't
satisfy the local crickets and cockroaches, so they moved into my
childhood bedroom. I still shiver when I remember the little
scratching noises of their feet on the wall next to my bed. After a
huge wood spider crawled over my hand while I slept, my parents gave
in to my pleas and sprinkled insecticide granules along the
baseboards under my bed.
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| Imagine waking up to this running over the back of your hand |
- Later as a newlywed , I happily
controlled ant problems at our first house by spraying its indoor and
outdoor perimeters with a long-lasting insect-killing solution. (It
said that it was safe for children and pets after it dried, so I
wasn't too worried about doing the kitchen counters and cabinets.)
When rats moved into the crawl space under our bathroom and
discovered the washing machine in the garage, Jay distributed rat poison cubes
around the property, and I'm pretty sure he didn't check to see if
they were USDA green-certified first (although the cubes were
green in color).
As you can see, my experience with
chemicals far outweighs the organic. But I'm down with having a
healthy family and as I said, last summer I felt ambitious—and
optimistic.
I have now been through 1.5 growing
seasons in our 8x8-foot garden plot. Some things I planted were
quite successful and other things were disappointing. But I have
worked very hard to pull weeds (a la Battle of Bermuda) without
touching the tempting spray bottle of Round-Up in my shed. I've
ignored the handy box of slug & snail bait and covered/uncovered
certain susceptible seedlings every day until they were large enough
to withstand the munching. Instead of buying bags of Miracle-Gro,
I've daily fed rabbits and “recycled” their waste into a stinky
pile in the corner of my yard.
To be completely honest, I have had
some doubts as to whether I can “count” my garden as being
organic. For one thing, when we buy non-organic vegetables and then
compost the peels and stems, does that make my compost un-
“organic”? If I'm giving my rabbits non- “green” feed, does
that make their poop un-organic? When I plant seeds that aren't
labeled “organic,” does that mean the plants that grow out of
them are un-organic, even if their leaves aren't sprayed with
chemicals? These doubts have nagged me.
And then today as I gazed wistfully at
the hand-tilled dirt rows that should have been full of seedlings, I
felt defeated. DE-feated. Every day there are fewer seedlings than
there were the day before. As of today, I had a total of three beet
seedlings left. There were four bok choy plants left out of 24 seeds
planted. Half of the bunching onions are gone. One quarter of the
sugar snap peas are left.
Clearly, organic is working for the
bugs in my life, but it isn't working for me.
After using up a wad of Kleenex and
drying my eyes, I did a web search on organic pest control—which
admittedly I probably should have done at the very beginning. But
the first article I looked at this morning wasn't very helpful. It
said that of the growers they interviewed, the highest pest-control
success rate was from letting ducks and chickens roam their yards.
Perfect. Even if our home owners'
association allowed raising poultry, I'm already pushing my personal
limits by having two rabbits. We do live near a series of duck
ponds, but the mallard couple who visits our neighborhood for one
week a year during mating season prefers our front yard.
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| Couldn't you visit the backyard? The alysum can take care of itself. |
Another article advised planting a
larger crop than you need to allow for insect consumption. That is
what I did, but the bugs are taking more than their fair share...and
I'm not going to dig up my entire backyard in the hopes that I'll get
four beets next year instead of three.
The next article I looked at discussed
making earwig traps using oil or something; I didn't finish reading
it because a neighbor arrived at the door just at that moment. She
noticed my red-rimmed eyes and asked how I was, so of course I had to
tell her my woes. She looked thoughtful and then said, “Are you
putting down oil traps for earwigs? My grandmother did that.”
Sigh. Maybe I shouldn't decry the
entire organic movement as being a failure but should instead better
equip myself to implement it more effectively. My, doesn't that sound mature of me? The truth is, I'm ready to plow the whole autumn
crop under (all 12 plants) and liberally dose the ground with some of
the Good Stuff.
But I guess I could finish
reading the oil trap article first. It does sound intriguing.
