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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Fw: ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT
  • Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:48:44 -0000


Just received this back as undelivered. So I'll try again.
john


That is true Mitch. I started of following organic dogma of rotations and gave it up because we noticed that volunteer potatoes did very well in their old location. If one does not use pesticides volunteers can not be avoided and if these had died of blight or any other disease I would of course have continued rotating. That was not necessary at all. I do think it is a matter of building a good soil without deficiencies and after that problems disappear.
In my youth I always saw potato growers burn potato stalks to prevent disease, instead I have always left unwanted parts of a crop decompose in situ. I have seen no sign of blight in twenty years. So I guess I must be doing something right:)

Common believe is all good and well but I think it is more important to keep your eyes open to what nature has to tell you and take it from there. Long ago we had clubroot in one poly tunnel but for one reason or another this was the best location for winter brassicas and so we kept on planting this group in the same location. Clubroot disappeared from itself there in about two years and it never spread to other locations. Of course we have continuously made the soil better there as well. (mostly by using composted sea fish waste I think).

There is an interesting article on SANET taken from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about natural Korean style farming in Hawaii by Susan Essoyan. "A self -sufficient system of farming is increasing yields across Hawaii". I have tried before to forward articles like this on this list and they are always refused and come bounced back at me. So if someone is interested you will have to look for it yourselves.
These people seem to be doing what I have been doing up to rearing pigs without the traditional stink.
I am not alone :)
john

T

John, didn't you say that you have been planting potatoes in the same area for years, to develop a variety well suited to your location? I believe I have read that potatoes should be planted in a different place every year to prevent blight. If I've understood correctly, your experience refutes common belief.

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.net



On Jan 21, 2011, at 1:24 PM, John D'hondt wrote:


*ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT!! [big snips]
Over the years a great many dedicated and totally committed people have spent most of their lives promoting and protecting the integrity of organics, often at very great personal cost. Now a new breed of 'soft organic' people seem to be emerging, who think it's more important to be 'media friendly' than to defend long held basic organic principles. They even consider some of us people to be 'organic fascists or extremists' - (which I have often been called!). Organic pioneers like Lawrence Hills, Lady Eve Balfour and many others must be turning in their graves!

<<< I am probably getting a reputation of a devils advocate but I can't help it. I am somewhat in doubt that organic pioneers would mind much that rotations are not strictly adhered to if they understood the background for the reason of rotation as much as some of us do today.

I just a few days ago received a long article about glyphosate/roundup by Jeffrey M. Smith in my inbox that might make some of these reasons clear. The title of the article is : "Monsanto's Roundup Triggers over 40 plant diseases and endangers human and animal health."
The way roundup triggers disease is by chelating/binding to necessary trace elements in soil. Healthy plants need almost 40 different elements just as we do and if they can't get them they are open to attack by mostly fungal diseases.
A nice experiment is described in the article of plants grown in completely sterile soil to which roundup is added and they are only slightly stunted compared to plants grown in normal soil without roundup. Plants grown in normal soil, full of soil organisms with roundup die almost instantaniously.

Plants and especially vegetables are miners for minerals. Some groups will take up more copper and zink and leave manganese and molybdenum mostly alone. And that is the reason for rotation, if we plant vegetables of the same group in the same plot year after year we will get short of copper and zink and the vegetables will get diseased.
Plant vegetables from another group and they may mine other minerals that are not yet exhausted. And if we have a very rich soil or subsoil the exhausted mineral supply may have become replenished after a few years.

If we grow vegetables on the same land for a long time we run the risk of terminally exhausting all kinds of minerals and rotations of however long a period will no longer help. Vegetables grown today have on average 50-70% less minerals than 50 years ago, even organic vegetables grown in rotation.

Things get really weird when chemicals have been applied. Seems that roundup is not at all as biodegradable as Monsanto has always told us. In some soils it has been found to have a half-life (when just half the original amount has been degraded) of 22 years. It has bound minerals and remains like that for a long time. Until for instance a well meaning grower applies phosphate fertilizer or an organic chicken manure when the glyphosate becomes active again and kills the whole new crop.
Another unpleasant detail is that soil tests can indicate that there are plenty of trace elements in the soil while these are completely inaccessible where glyphosate has been applied even many years before.

Organic pioneers might indeed turn around in their graves but perhaps for different reasons than that people don't adhere to rotations very strictly.
john




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  • [Livingontheland] Fw: ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT, John D'hondt, 01/22/2011

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