the top two pictures of a cornfield just off county line road in porter county are a visualization of why, according to michael pollan, it takes ten calories of energy to produce and deliver one calorie of food ( in 1940s the system produced 2.3 calories of food for every calorie of fossil fuel it used)...corn as raw material to be harvested, shipped , and processed into around seventeen-thousand "food" items...from hamburger (corn fed beef...read up on acidotic cattle in cafo's sometime...you'll stop eating at macdonald's) to mountain dew...almost all of questionable value...the garden stands in opposition to this philosphically ( and let me say here that i do still occasionally eat processed food...although fast food and i parted ways a couple of years ago...i wouldn't want any holier than thou crap creeping in here...i am not perfect or totally reformed..but i AM thinking about it a lot more) and is, in part, an exploration of some sort of rational, healthful, sustainable, alternative.
the last picture is of a jerusalem artichoke plant that has reached sixty-eight inches in height in about two-and-a-half months...we have been fairly successful, fortunate in our choice of plants and the weather, a lack of pest infestations and critters preying on the greens...this has been a reminder of how much work and hope go into raising food...and how unpredictable results can be...the best butress i can see against catastrophy is diversity...in agriculture and beyond...there ar e a multitude of lessons to learn here.
what plans did you have in mind in the event of pests etc? what types of natural pesticides are available and how effective are they?
ReplyDeleteaside from the worms i put in i had a contingency for introducing lady bugs...although they like jerusalem artichokes and may just show up once they flower...pirate bugs and green lacwewings are also forms of aphid predators available commercially...i am already using nicotine dissolved in water as a repellent ( broke up some cheap-assed cigars and soaked them make sure you wash anything you might harvest thoroughly...i'll be using it on the tomatoes too)...i'm using a small rodent repellent called plant skydd i bought from my organic supplier in maine...additionally most of the plants we're growing, beyond the potatoes and tomatoes, aren't very pest prone...the jerusalem artichokes are native to the area and are so hardy that i've been warned to be aggressive in harvesting if i don't want them to take over...the campus isn't alive with wildlife...we're not growing anything attractive to birds...and the soil was so sterile when i stared that i couldn't even find an earthworm...chemlawned to death...next season will be yams, jerusalem artichokes, black eyed peas, and garden peas...i'm looking into issues they might have now
ReplyDeletespinosad is the most prevalent organic pesticide and it's not a very broad spectrum one...you need to use others and some aren't all that good for you...it's weird sounding stuff...it's made forma bacteria (saccharopolyspora spinosa) that was found in an abandonded run distillery in 1982 and that organism hasn't been found in nature since(!)...the bacteria form metabolites in ferentation and the toxin is formulated from them...one the whole i'd rather use repellemts and peditory insects, if necessary...so far so good.
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