Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Experts muddy 'master gardener'
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4DMG/Whats/jbaker.htm

As one of the nation's best-known gardeners, Jerry Baker is famous for his 
folksy ways, funny stories and home remedies.

Baker, the star of gardening videos and the Public Broadcasting System, 
advises people to douse their yards with special "tonics" made from chewing 
tobacco, human urine, birth control pills, mouthwash, molasses, detergent and 
beer. "Everything you need is in your kitchen and medicine cabinet," declares 
Baker, who calls himself "America's Master Gardener."

His grandfatherly style has made him one of PBS's top three fund-raisers, 
bringing in millions of dollars to local PBS stations since 1995. He is back 
on the air this month for the summer fund-raising drive.

But while Baker is beloved by PBS contributors and station managers, he 
receives nearly universal condemnation from plant scientists, who say his 
advice ranges from the wacky to the downright dangerous. The academic experts 
are angry that PBS, a network known for distinguished science programs, 
continues to put Baker on the air.

"What he's telling people to do is ridiculous," says Larry Kuhns, professor 
of ornamental horticulture at Pennsylvania State University. "For PBS to give 
him all this unwarranted credibility is extremely frustrating to those of us 
who've spent years doing research and looking at the evidence."

In addition, state and federal agricultural agents are angry that he 
trademarked the term "America's Master Gardener" in 1994, causing widespread 
confusion with the U.S. Agriculture Department's own master gardener program, 
which has provided rigorous scientific training to more than 100,000 lay 
people since 1971.

PBS's vice president of fund-raising programs, Alan Foster, says PBS takes 
the content of its programs seriously and has not seen convincing evidence 
that Baker's advice is harmful. "Most of the criticism has come from people 
with vested interests, who are the traditional experts," Foster says. He says 
Baker is a successful fund-raiser and his appearances illustrate the 
network's diversity.

Baker says he doesn't respond, point by point, to his critics: "They do their 
thing and I do mine. I do it sincerely and I get hugs and kisses from people 
when I'm done."

Jerry Baker, 68, began his career in the late 1950s as a Detroit undercover 
cop, investigating heroin and marijuana rings. But his love of gardening kept 
him busy maintaining the precinct house's lawn and going undercover as a tree 
trimmer.

The Detroit Free Press did a story on him, and he soon began writing a 
gardening column for the newspaper. In the 1960s and 1970s, he appeared 
frequently on local TV and on national shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Dinah 
Shore, Johnny Carson and others. When The Tonight Show was based in New York, 
Carson asked him why the tips of his houseplants were black. Baker told 
Carson that a draft in his apartment was drying his plant's leaves. Carson 
bet $1 that his luxury apartment was draft-free. After the show, the pair 
took a limo to Carson's apartment and lit a match. Baker won the $1.

In 1971, Baker wrote the best-selling Plants Are Like People, the first of 
his 40 gardening books. He was Kmart's gardening spokesman for 27 years. For 
the past 15 years, he's had a national radio program. His Saturday morning 
show, syndicated by Westwood One, is now on 217 stations.

Baker and Roger Swain, host of PBS's Victory Garden, are the only truly 
national figures in gardening. Baker considers himself a performer: "I 
entertain, then I educate. I like showing off."

His career had quieted somewhat after his heyday in the 1960s and '70s, but 
it was rejuvenated by his PBS deal and the entrepreneurship of his son, Jeff 
Baker, and son-in-law, Kim Gaisor, who started a mail-order business to sell 
garden products.

"Our goal is to turn Jerry Baker into the Betty Crocker of gardening. We want 
his name, his face and his down-home wisdom to be known to every gardener," 
Gaisor says.

Jerry Baker had little interest in business when his son and son-in-law 
invested $550 in 1987 to start the company. It now employs 60 people in the 
Detroit suburb of Wixom. Jerry Baker is paid a fee for his PBS appearances, 
but he doesn't own an interest in the company, which sells Jerry Baker Lawn 
Food, Jerry Baker Thatch Buster and other garden products.

In 1995, the company started licensing Jerry Baker videos to PBS, which makes 
the programs available for local stations to use for fund-raising.

Baker declines to say what his income is or how much he earns from the 
licensing arrangement with PBS.

"I never chased the buck. The buck chased me," Baker says. He lives on a lake 
near Orlando, Fla., and maintains 7 immaculate acres himself, mowing the lawn 
in a crisscross pattern so that the grass roots never catch direct sunlight.

A PBS superstar

Jerry Baker was an instant sensation on PBS. In his first year, he raised 
$77,000 in three hours for KCPT-TV in Kansas City, a record that still 
stands. The station repeated the show four days later; he raised another 
$67,000.

"In Kansas City, nobody can touch Jerry as a fund-raiser," says John Mertz, 
producer of the station's membership drive. "In fund-raising terms, he's got 
legs. People don't seem to tire of him."

Last August, Jerry Baker did a live 10-hour marathon fund-raiser that was 
made available by satellite to all PBS stations. It was a huge success, and 
many stations rebroadcast the marathon in March and again this August.

"Jerry raised $112,000 in the marathon, which is phenomenal for us," says 
Diane Bliss, a vice president at WTVS-TV in Detroit. The station repeated the 
marathon in March and raised another $176,000.

PBS does not release national figures on local fund-raising or how many PBS 
stations carry particular shows. But station executives rank Baker among the 
top three PBS fund-raisers of the last few years.

Baker's critics agree that he is enormously entertaining. It's the content of 
his TV appearances that disturbs them. A few local PBS stations have heeded 
pressure from horticulturists and dropped Baker, PBS spokesman Foster says.

But most stations stick with him.

Extension agents in the Ohio State University system petitioned WOSU-TV in 
Columbus to remove Baker's show from the air because, they said, his advice 
was scientifically unsound and sometimes harmful. In a letter to the 
station's general manager, the agents cited examples of bad advice, including 
improper and illegal use of herbicides and insecticides.

The extension agents say they got no response.

"A station affiliated with Ohio State should be using and airing good 
horticultural information, not the misinformation that Baker pours out," says 
Jane Martin, an extension agent in Franklin County, home of Ohio State. 
"Every time he's on, we get flooded with calls asking for Jerry Baker 
recipes, and we have to say, 'Well, that's not such a good idea.'

WOSU's response: "At PBS, we present different things. Not everyone will 
agree with everything," says Keri Allen, director of development.

Homemade potions

The scientific community screams loudest at Baker's suggestions for homemade 
pesticides, such as his fondness for using a chewing tobacco-water mixture to 
kill bugs.

"He's using the chewing tobacco for the nicotine, which is a lethal 
pesticide, far more dangerous than most of what you buy at the store," says 
Doug Welsh, a horticulture professor at Texas A&M. "And he's killing the good 
bugs and the bad bugs. That's not good gardening."

Other examples cited by his critics:

    •To kill suckers growing on trees, Baker recommends using "any good weed 
killer" with dish soap, vinegar and gin. Although the last three ingredients 
are irrelevant, many herbicides, including the popular Roundup, could harm or 
even kill a tree, experts say.

    •After pruning flowering trees, Baker recommends sealing the wounds with 
latex paint, antiseptic mouthwash and an insecticide such as Sevin or 
Dursban. Jim Chatfield, a landscape specialist at Ohio State, says the use of 
such insecticides without regard to the type of tree or insect is 
irresponsible, and to do so while flowers are in bloom and insects are 
pollinating is outrageous.

    •The California Environmental Protection Agency wrote KVIE-TV, the PBS 
affiliate in Sacramento, a two-page letter in 1996 criticizing Baker's advice 
on home-brewed pesticides. The agency said it was concerned not only with 
Baker's formulas but also his advice to mix them in bottles and cans usually 
used for food. "It is not only illegal under state and federal law to do 
this, it is also highly dangerous," wrote Veda Federighi of the California 
EPA's Department of Pesticide Regulation. She cited examples of children who 
died drinking pesticides in food containers. (In his videos, Baker tells 
viewers to clearly mark each container.)

Still, only a small portion of Baker's advice is potentially harmful, his 
critics say; most of it is simply wrong-headed.

Baker recommends frequent shampooing of lawns and plants "to improve 
photosynthesis" and "help your yard win the never-ending battle against 
insects and disease."

But Charles Krause, an Agriculture Department research scientist, says the 
benefits of shampooing plants elude him. " I sure would like to see Jerry 
Baker's evidence that it improves photosynthesis," he says.

Like many with doctorate degrees, Chuck Powell, a technical adviser to the 
Commercial Rose Growers Association, is puzzled by some of Baker's 
ingredients. Of a fertilizer that includes a tablespoon of bourbon, Powell 
says: "It won't hurt the plant, but it sounds like a waste of good whiskey to 
me."

Baker says his advice has been tested by years of gardening by himself and 
his fans.

"The redwood trees grew just fine before we had garden centers and people 
with academic certificates," he says. "I can't worry about what the 
competition says."

The business

The average customer for the family's mail-order business, American Master 
Products, is 55 or older and middle class. Customers "like homey, 
middle-America stuff," says Gaisor, Baker's son-in-law, who designs the 
direct-mail campaigns. The company sends out 20 million pieces of mail a year 
from a mailing list that includes PBS contributors who get Baker merchandise 
in exchange for making donations.

But regulators are not among the company's fans. The company was told that it 
is illegal to sell the homemade tonics that Jerry Baker recommends on TV for 
the same reason his critics want him removed from PBS: a lack of scientific 
proof that the tonics are either safe or effective.

His weed killer - "Only Available Through Jerry Baker" - is, in fact, a 
common herbicide called trimec. Rather than the mix of beer, ammonia, baby 
shampoo or molasses recommended on TV as an "all-season green up tonic," his 
fertilizers contain the typical blends of nitrogen, phosphates and potash 
found at every garden center.

The company's top-selling item is Jerry Baker Dog & Cat Repellent - "my 
unique formula," as his catalog describes it. Actually, it's methyl nonyl 
ketone, the same ingredient found in other dog repellents.

"There's nothing he's got registered to sell that hasn't been around for 
many, many years," says Jim Burnett Jr., deputy pesticide administrator for 
North Carolina. The only difference is price - about one-third more than 
you'd pay at Wal-Mart.

In January, North Carolina fertilizer regulator Susan Baker told the company 
to tone down claims made on its fertilizer packaging. The company complied. 
But she says some of its advertising claims still appear to go over the line. 
"Many companies are selling the same product, and they're looking for an 
edge," she says.

The licensing agreement with PBS expires this year on five Jerry Baker videos 
and in 2002 on another four. The family company is in a strong negotiating 
position. The company has a web site (www.jerrybaker.com) and 150,000 
subscribers to its $20-a- year newsletter.

"The boys have done a great job expanding what I started," Baker says. "I'm 
very proud."

Copyright 1999, USA TODAY.  Reprinted with permission.