Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>]

kate spinner wrote:
> Seems like neem oil is being touted as a vegetable pest cure all. Does
> anyone know whether this is true and whether is it used with any
> success in organic agriculture?

It's been years (decades, actually) since I used neem oil. My biggest 
question about it at the time was how limited it was in its 
impact--whether non-target species would be knocked off as well.

I stopped being interested in neem (or rotenone, or pyrethrin, or any 
other "organic" way to kill insects as a way of dealing with competition 
for my crops) when I made the amazing discovery that I didn't have to 
kill *anybody* to harvest my crops--indeed, the solution to insect 
problems was: More insects!

The story is at
http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Organic-Gardening-Beneficial-Insects.html

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us

A person dependent on somebody else for everything from potatoes to opinions may 
declare that he is a free man, and his government may issue a certificate granting him 
his freedom, but he will not be free. He is that variety of specialist known as a 
consumer, which means that he is the abject dependent of producers. How can he be free 
if he can do nothing for himself? What is the First Amendment to him whose mouth is 
stuck to the tit of the "affluent society"?  ~Wendell Berry