North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

I don't know what happened in Dennis' case, but the organic
orcharding/gardening failures I've seen have been because people - and these
have been small, amateur growers - thought organic meant no pest control at
all, or very little.  You still need such things as spray programs,
beneficial insects, pheromone controls, and very healthy organically
enriched soil, nitrogen-fixing cover crops, and resistant varieties.    The
choice with fruit trees isn't whether to spray, it's what to spray.    The
program needs to be tailored.  I knew one commercial apple grower who was
able to drastically improve the value of her crop by using codling moth
pheromone confusion lures - hereabouts, the codling moth is our worst apple
pest.  Back east, I wouldn't expect the quantity or quality of organic fruit
we have here in California, not just because we have more organic production
here, but our fruit growers don't have to deal with curculio.  That one
beast alone makes me respect that there are still limitations to organic
growing.

 

~ Stephen

 

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From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Erdman, James
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 1:22 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Boron and other things

 

Arouond here, quite a few people are growing apples organically, and making
a living at it.  Maybe they didn't give up too soon, but I know that some of
them started their orchards from scratch as an organic orchard.

 

Jim, in Menomonie, WI

 

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From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of
dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com
Sent: Wed 4/4/2007 2:33 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Boron and other things

"Chemical agriculture is where superstition
abounds. Every chemist worth his or her salt KNOWS how
delicate and subtle the chemical equilibria
of biological reactions is, and yet there is the
superstition that you can pour nitrogen, phosphate and
chloride salts on the land and burn its
organic matter up, wreck its microbiology, dump toxic
chemicals on crops and then the food will be healthy
to eat. It takes mountains of faith - or
superstition - to believe such utter bilge."

Well, since we tried to grow 10,000 apples trees organically for 3 years and
almost lost over half of them to pests and disease, we came to the
conclusion that we would have to "believe such utter bilge", burn organic
matter up, wreck its microbiology and dump toxic chemicals on crops.  Sorry
folks, some of us grow fruit for a living!

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard

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