Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Kate Spinner <kespinner@gmail.com>]

She was criticizing a "well known gardening presenter" for trivializing crop rotation. To discredit this person, she said the person in his or her book incorrectly characterized tomatoes as legumes and potatoes as roots (which I always thought they were?).

I think she went on a rant because she believes very strongly in crop rotation as an organic approach. Sounds like there are some other industry pressures trying to eat away at organic standards in the UK, as there probably are here in the U.S. as well. And as an organic farmer, she is extremely frustrated that organics are being undermined. She probably has grounds for such frustration.

The standards are there because industry - organic industry included - cannot be trusted to take the same cautious and community-minded approach as the small farmer down the road who has to face his or her customers. 

On Jan 20, 2011, at 8:50 PM, Pete Vukovich wrote:

I don't get it, what's objectionable about growing tomato's and legumes, or potatos and 'roots' .Other than the extra work to harvest them... I mix pretty much everything,don't use fertilizer (other than azomite every 2 or 3 years which is organically certified, and green , and composted animal manure) - every year or so I dump so extra composted carbon on it and it has seemed better and better for about 6 or 7 years now.

Corn does well in it, root vegetables, brassicacea, tomatos, and of course potatos. Almost as many things volunteer or are perennial now as those I plant. I think rotating is a great idea, succession an even better one, but THE LAW? What am I missing here? Calling people moles because they have different ideas about what works, is indicative of a person who is either perennially imbalanced, or just having a really bad day and has no psychological tools in their toolbox to know the difference.

I liked organic much better when it was finding out about what the local environment wanted, tolerated, and appreciated, I like it much less as an established rarified professional art. If you ask me that's what will kill it, the same way industrial farming turned farming into mining.

--pete

--- On Thu, 1/20/11, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Thursday, January 20, 2011, 3:14 PM

*ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT!!
http://nickykylegardening.com/recipesconsumer-news
Written by Nicky Kyle

I must tell you that I was recently contacted by someone who had just read an article in a magazine written by a well known gardening presenter, and thought I ought to know about it. "A (so-called) no-nonsense guide to rotations" which said that rotations didn't really matter!  It continued that "you should get a minimum gap of three years between successive same-group crops" and that "my own approach is not to be hide-bound by it - it is rarely the end of the world if you grow your onions in the same place for two consecutive years"!  Well I agree it might not be the end of the world, but it might be the end of onion growing in their particular garden if they continued for very long with that potentially dangerous approach! This person also includes potatoes in their root section and tomatoes (outdoor) in their legume section!  Interesting and quite novel to say the least!!  They are entitled to their opinion, and I have absolutely no problem with them expressing that opinio
n, as long as it is made perfectly clear that it is their personal opinion and not the accepted opinion or recommended practice of the organisation which they purport to represent.

I do have a big problem though, when this opinion is expressed under the headline banner of that internationally famous commercial organic organisation. Perhaps this presenter was unaware, but ought not to be, that that this professed approach is actually outlawed under EU organic standards and also therefore against EU law!  With very sound horticultural reason!  I
Is this the thin end of the wedge - maybe even perhaps the gradual 'dumbing down' of organics by the media and others? That would really play into the hands of  the great many chemical/GM multinationals interests very nicely wouldn't it?!!  Us organic people have been a constant thorn in their side for a great many years!

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