Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[richard green <greenrw71@hotmail.com>]

Amen brother, the presenter made clear they were speaking about back yard gardening. Space and sun light are limiting factors in every yard. However,what is good practice in organic farming when practical should be applied to the back yard also. But wanting some one jailed for mentioning alternative ways? Might be a little extream and fanatical. Some of my beds receive partial shade and are not suited to certain vegetables which further limits rotational plans, I do however like to move things about and have two beds currently out of production one planted in winter wheat, one planted in winter rye and am playing with winter peas under sowed in the remaining beds.

Rick

 

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Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:50:50 -0800
From: pvukovic1@yahoo.com
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT

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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