PING: Monique

"Tish Silberbauer" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:18:39 -0700, "EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)"
wrote:

I have nothing against organic but I'm not going to avoid foodstuffs
that
don't use pesticides. I use pesticides in my house when those damned
Palmetto bugs and Wolf crickets wander in from outside. I just make
sure it
doesn't affect me and my cats or their food supply.

As I understand it, foods raised without pesticides are free
of pests because of being grown with other foods that repel
the pests that might attack them. Also, sometimes the
pesticides incorporate themselves INTO the food (DDT and
food-fish, for example - one reason DDT is no longer
routinely used).

minor rant warning
Organic producers / growers *do* use pesticides, it's just that they
use pesticides derived from natural products - e.g. pyrethrum derived
from the pyrethrum plant (a kind of daisy) or garlic, rather than
generated in a laboratory. It is a very common fallacy that organic
means "pesticide free", but it ain't so.

I do, however, strongly agree that the reduction in use (or banning)
of long-term, persistent pesticides and herbicides (like DDT) is a
good thing and we were stupid to have ever used these things. People
will be paying for the use of these poisons for generations to come -
just look at the poor folks in Vietnam who are still suffering the
after-effects of the abuse of the defoliant (i.e. a herbicide) Agent
Orange during the Vietnam war.

Oddly enough, some of these natural pesticides (pyrethrum being a good
example) *can* be more damaging to the local insect ecology than the
nasty laboratory ones that have a more specific action. Pyrethrum is
extremely good at killing insects (unless they develop resistance -
another story), but its problem is that it is very broad in its action
and will kill beneficial as well as pest insects. If you're an
organic or biodynamic farmer and want / need to maintain healthy
population of beneficial insects, which includes pollinators like bees
and predators like ladybirds, frequent spraying the totally natural,
organic and earth-friendly pyrethrum will do more harm than good.
Other pest control methods, like companion planting that Evelyn
mentioned, are more complex to use and require much more time
monitoring both pest and beneficial insect populations, but in a
small-scale operation that doesn't use large-scale monocultures, can
be better in the long run.

rant finished

I suppose that I'd better go out to my veggie patch now and pick off
the cabbage white butterfly eggs that have been laid on my broccoli
seedlings. I only have 8 seedlings, so it's not too much of a chore!
Keeping the kangaroo out of my veggie patch is much more of a
challenge! (they've eaten *all* the leaves off my okra, stripped the
parsley, nibbled most of my chillis, and are having a serious attempt
at my basil - grrrr!).

Soundl sike the 'roos have a penchant for Thai food, although the image of a
'roo suffering from 'chilli burn' (in either of the orifices that are
susceptable) is quite amusing.

Yowie