permaculture

["Jerome Osentowski" <jerome@crmpi.org>]

You can join the group saying "never say never" but I  hope you find 
something to hold on to when you start sliding down that slippery slop. I
have  two friends here that call themselves inviormentalist, but still use
rould up on some weeds.  One is only 45 and just had a cancer removed from
his neck.  Regarding bugs in the greenhouse or in the garden.  I have found
that with continued flowering plants, I can keep the good bug population
around to take care of the bad ones. It does take some planning and you do
not want to let the situation get out of hand.  I had some white flys in the
60 foot greenhouse this fall so i sent for an order of Eretmoscerus ,
parasite wasp for whitefly that work better in the winter.  The problem went
away.  In the summer I have plenty of good bugs around, but do set out
an order of lace wings and maybe an order of Encarsia formosa just in case.
I keep plenty of flowering plants going year round.  weeds and grasses are a
good pollen course when nothing  eles is flowering.  After they are done
flowering I eat them or feed them to the rabbits.  All part of the big plan.
Just the way thing work in the natural world.  Sure you can spray a field
with round up then plant a cover crop or what ever, and it could be a way to
get moveing on with a project faster, but if you look and thinks a little
harder you can useally find a natural way to do the same thing naturally.
It might take a year longer...  jerome
--
Jerome Osentowski, Director
Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute
PO Box 631
Basalt, CO 81621   U.S.A.

Tel/fax (970) 927-4158    E mail: jerome@crmpi.org

For more information, please visit our web site at <<www.crmpi.org>>


----------
>From: Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>
>To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: [permaculture] Re: permaculture digest, Vol 1 #459 - 5 msgs
>Date: Sun, Dec 29, 2002, 1:23 PM
>

> At 12:00 PM 12/29/02 -0500, you wrote:
>>4) chemical intervention (by far least prefered- only to be considered in
>>the most extreme of cases)- Using chemical pesticides to control the aphids-
>>however in permaculture design thinking, if such a drastic step is deemed
>>necessary, something is fundementally out of balance. It would make sense to
>>think about major redesign of the system...
>>
>>There are times when Permaculture designers might consider one-off
>>application of a non-persistant herbicide to clear a large area of ground in
>>a hurry in order to plant it up with edible crops to be acceptable- the
>>'hierarchy of interventions' is a pattern language which in a way says
>>"Never say never", if you see what I mean...
>>
>>HTH, Graham
>>www.landandliberty.co.uk
>
>
> I have to disagree with the above statement.  I have never found that
> chemical intervention was a solution, it can provide temporary relief but
> in the long run the use of chemicals is a postponement of dealing with an
> imbalance.  To my way of thinking using chemicals has more to do with pc
> ethics; does one sell chemically tainted food to another, or is this
> chemical going to persist in my soil, or is my laziness, or
> desperation  adequate reason for abandoning principal?
>
> I also don't know of any chemical herbicide that is non-persistant, while
> it may not persist in its original form, it persists in its constituent
> parts and those constituent parts may be more pernicious than the original
> compound.
>
> While "never say never" is an appealing maxim I think that there are
> "absolutely never" situations, such as never use DDT.  While one could
> argue that Malaria is much worse than the effects of DDT on the
> environment, this type of argument is almost always anthropocentric and in
> my mind not worthy of consideration.  Most of the banned chemicals fall
> into the the "never, ever" category this  applies both to agricultural
> chemicals as well as pharmaceuticals.
>
> I know the temptation is great to bring in the chemical artillery when the
> greenhouse is full of spider mite, or aphid, but it is the same kind of
> desperation that brings out the artillery when one wants someone else's oil
> ie Bush and Iraq.
>
> Scott
>
>
>
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