Organic?

[Lesso]

What does that mean to you?
Why is this your preferred way to grow? Or why not?
How do you define "chemical"?
If something (like a fertilizer) is not organic is it chemical?
Are "organics" necessarily natural?
Are chemicals the antecedent of organics?
How do you differentiate between something that is chemical vs natural?
If you are an organic proponent, what chemicals will you accept in your garden?

 

[stinkyattic]

Well, to me the first thing that comes to mind is chemical compounds comprised of hydrocarbon chains and rings : ) ahhh , O-Chem... yeah I'm a lab rat, sue me.

Then there's the USDA rules giving time limits for how long a piece of farmland has to sit between the last pesticide application and getting certified (which I *think* is like 50 years but could be wrong, also soil testing for residuals is required), among other things. A farmer can grow organically but not be eligible for a certification yet. Depending on breakdown time from last chemical application, I would often think of the product as organically grown.

To me, I consider something organic if it's fed and protected using substances extracted from an animal (bone/blood/fish meal), vegetable (kelp, horsetail) or mineral (fulvic acid, limestone) rather than chemicals made in a reactor.

Inorganic compounds in fertilizers, such as (using the chemistry definition here) calcium phosphate or potassium nitrate) exist in nature and i would happily give a pass on for something i was told is "organic".

The stabilizers and surfactants in fertilizers and sprays, though, are sometimes organic (again, chem definition) compounds and I would not consider them acceptable for organic growing.

So, to recap: inorganic chemicals can totally be organic.
Organic chemicals aren't usually organic.

Confused yet? It gets better!

Pyrethrin occurs naturally in members of the chrysanthemum family. It's an organic organic!!! The usual activator for it (rotenone) is an organic chemical but not organic grow approved. Neem oil is a cocktail of organic hydrocarbons. And it's suitable for organic growing!

Organic gardening styles should focus on building a harmonious balance in the soil, water, and environment using natural substances plus the bacteria, fungi, and even beneficial insects to help the plants thrive in the world you've built for them : )

Edit: added paragraphs. The formatting shamers on Reddit ( r/talesfromthefrontdesk is my guilty pleasure to read daily) are actually on to something lol

 

[oldfogey8]

I’m a dummy(and gullible and trusting and too lazy to really research it). If the label tells me it’s organic, I go with that...

 

[Rosebud]

I love organics, you can't burn a plant with bat guano or worm castings. Kelp, bone meal etc... I was organic in my back yard for 20 years before growing pot, the front yard roses were the last to go natural, hard to exhibit organic roses, who cares, i quit doing that. It is much more enjoyable to keep a compost pile going and add to it daily. Like I said, i love organics.

 

[Lesso]

So, stinky attics post was a definition of sorts as to what organic means to someone who has studied organic chemestry, ok. Im not sure most people look at it that way, but valid points.
Old fogey responded with an honest answer that i think would align to 99 percent of the organics buying public. Read a label, see organic, feel good about a purchase.
Rosebud gave us an anecdotal reason as to why she enjoys organics and finds them useful.
I guess a follow up question to my first post would be more of a philosophical one, rather than a purely scientific one.
Is it always better/healthier to employ an organic approach to your garden?

 

[stinkyattic]

The simple answer is a resounding YES. why?
-Rosebuds points that the fertilizers are gentle on your plants
-expired chemical fertilizers and pesticides often fall under RCRA hazardous waste regulations. It is unethical or unlawful to dispose of some types down the drain or in the rubbish. If you have a septic system, you could kill your happy bugs. Putting a bottle of expired fungicide down the toilet could actually kill off the bioflora in the municipal wastewater works. Buy only the minimum you need. Try to use it all up. Diluted old ferts can be used up on ornamental garden plants over the course of a few seasons. Or share with a friend so you always use it up!
- the environmental impact of making chemicals is high. Think of energy from mining to transportation of stocks to running the reactors to bringing it to the shop packaged for sale. Double that when you consider making the plastics for the packaging itself.
- the human workforce impact could be an ethical issue. Many raw materials and precursor minerals for making chemical substances are mined in developing countries where wages and safety are questionable at best. Furthermore, lots of reactors exist in places like China and India to transform them into the desired building blocks, and again, the issues with poverty, unsafe working conditions, and massive environmental impact are certainly a good enough reason to consider organic options even if you aren't fully organic! This is known as Toxics Use Reduction. Find alternatives with lower overall impacts.
So... Consider what costs -social, environmental, health, etc- are involved at every step in manufacturing the item you are about to buy. This goes for equipment too- resuseable vs disposable?
It's a big question to wrap your head around and you gotta look at the big picture: )
That being said, simple chemical fertilizers are very good to learn with, and chemical pesticides are sometimes necessary if a problem has gotten out of hand. Employing techniques from both sides of the table is often a good approach, especially while you are still getting used to indoor growing.

 

[Lesso]

So nothing organic is harmful in that way?
Feces is organic, it gets released into the gulf, then red tide kills fish and dolphins.

 

[stinkyattic]

Totally!
Cow **** is organic, but the nutrients from the runoff get into lakes, feed blue green algae, who then methylate elemental mercury, and bioaccumulation begins and eventually your pregnant wifes fish dinner can give your kid brain damage.
Chicken **** is organic but a single application can scorch your garden like round-up if it's not composted enough.
Botulism is all natural and the toxin it releases will kill you.
The big picture gets complicated fast... The information to put it all together would (and does!) fill a metric ton of textbooks. I love this topic and could go on for days! But my thumb was cramping. : )

 

[Lesso]

Its a subject that requires some thought, at least.

 

[Rosebud]

In my ideal little world and after 40 years in this little yard i think i have a garden alive. not dead from chemicals. So, my background as a child I lived on a farm and my dad was a great farmer, not a weed, not an insect. WHAT??? yeah His food garden was organic and he composted everything, think baling wire, gunny sacks. I learned to love bugs and stuff. I should have been an entomologist, but i didn't even know there was such a thing until i spent a few years in Master Gardeners at a local university. Integrated Pest Management was taught then, and I still apply those principles. Nothing makes me as happy as seeing mycorrhizal fungus all over the place, and ladybug larva, i do cartwheels over.
I have a little compost pot by the sink i carry out to the bigger composter to add dry leaves to it and spread it on the garden every spring. You don't compost feces. some horse manure is fun, kinda hot though. You compost it turns black and yucky but the end results smells like fresh garden soil.
Lesso, you picken' up what im putting down? Organics is a philosophy that I use in most aspects of my life.

 

[2RedEyes]

Much like Rose’s Dad, my dad grew up on a Missouri dairy farm and learned to garden early and did his entire life...always a compost pile and mom had a 5 gallon bucket in the kitchen for daily scraps..some went to the compost pile and some went to the chickens...wish I’d paid more attention... I think organic can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it...I try to be as organic as I can in my outdoor pot and veggie garden...inside hydro and my simple nute formula are workin and I let it run...

 

[Lesso]

Love it rosebud. Good point 2RE

 

[Lesso]

I love the discussions we have on this forum

 

[umbra]

There is 1 way to compost feces, EM1. It is designed for waste remediation. That's why it uses a consortium of microbes. It will actually pickle it and change it chemically.

 

[burnin1]

My Grandfather grew up on a farm not too long after the turn of the century. They did n0t use pesticides or chemical fertilizers. What we call organic food today they called food.

 

[stinkyattic]

Yeah i should have used the word "aged " rather than "composted" for turd-y stuff. It's a different mechanism of breakdown. Fun fact, turds from rabbits and sheep are actually great even when relatively fresh because of the unique digestive systems of those critters. The aging is well along, helped out by internal happy bacteria, before the nuggets hit the ground!
Another fun fact: all those solids that settle out of municipal waste treatment plants? "Night Soil" is a fertilizer gold mine once the breakdown progresses enough . (No, I'm not about to go fishing for brown trout in the concrete pond as a fertilizer source. )
Edit: yay! Found a term for feces that the Politeness Bot seems to accept!!!

 

[Lesso]

Pickled turds huh? That is not gonna be a top selling jar at walmart.

 

[stinkyattic]

They sell gallon jugs of miracle whip; the turds would arguably be more useful.

Many moons ago one of the fish farms I worked at had the bright idea (this was about a year before I started working there) to package their fish waste solids slurry from the pretreatment plant, and sell it as a fertilizer in jugs. But... they didn't age or stabilize it correctly and there was a lot of explaining to do to angry shopkeepers when they'd come in on a Monday morning in August to find the exploded leaky remains of our locally made organic fish waste fertilizer all over... EVERYTHING.
The only fertilizer I've ever had explode in storage is Canna Bio Terra Vega. Quite a treat to clean up! But proof that SOMETHING in there was still biologically active!

 

[oldfogey8]

I have a composter in the woods behind my house and I have put ALL(much to Mrs Fogeys irritation) my veg scraps, egg shells, weed trimmings, leaves, coffee grounds and grass clippings in it for 20 years. I never get anything out of it though. Something pulls the good stuff out of holes gnawed in the sides. But I still do it. My grandmother owned an old farm her parents had worked. She rented most of it out to corn farmers. We lived there as kids for a couple years and the stuff she grew was awesome and I assume organic. She grew pumpkins and water melons on the site of an old chicken coop that had composted itself into the ground. She had strawberries rows that, in hind site, paralleled the septic pipe coming out of her house but put to shame any strawberry I have had since. I remember her cutting her empty Utica Club cans in half and pouring a bit of the beer into the cans to attract and kill slugs(which I do now). And potatoes? Her potatoes had flavor. Potatoes now are bland. I wish I had half her knowledge and instinct. Organic farming is based on eons of adaptation and evolution. Solving in decades what ‘survival of the fittest’ has worked on over millennia is difficult at best. I worked in the tech field for most of my life and I know there is always room for improvement and there is more than one way to skin a cat but a lot of old ‘tech’ beats the crap out of new junk(a blender used to last decades now they last months, etc). But for me, the bottom line is, I like that I don’t have to monitor my pH because I am lazy...

 

[umbra]

EM Technology® was "discovered" and developed by Professor Dr. Teruo Higa while he was a professor of horticulture at the College of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan. He became ill from his exposure to chemicals before he turned 30. Prior to that, Dr. Higa was a proponent of conventional agriculture and worked on the development of synthetic agricultural products. Having grown up around farming, he knew that farmers were left at the mercy of the chemical companies that supplied them with increasingly expensive inputs. He decided to find a natural method through the use of beneficial microorganisms that would help relieve the farmers of their chemical dependencies.

In the mid-late 1960’s, microorganisms were being studied around the world for various applications. Most of that research was on single strains of microbes using single inoculations. Dr. Higa decided to study combined cultures first to find which ones would co-exist. He used only non-pathogenic, facultative (work with and without air) microbes for his experiments.

A mixture he had thrown on a patch of grass before leaving for a school vacation was eventually to become what we know as EM·1®. Upon returning from vacation he noticed the area where he had thrown the “waste” product had grown considerably. He reviewed his notes and re-mixed his concoction. Through years of experimentation he discovered the optimal combination of microbes and named the combination “EM®”, an acronym for “Effective Microorganisms®”.

Dr. Higa started his development of EM·1® in 1968. His work pioneered the use of multiple strains of microbes in a cocktail combined with multiple applications. The first batch on the market under the trade name “EM®” was sold in Japan in 1982.