Bananaman88

Nice pic, Nate!

Dean W.

Great picture, Nate! I have 5 compost piles myself. I use leaves, coffee grounds, table scraps, egg shells, and chicken manure.

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mskitty38583

oh nate thats lovely! i have my compost piles in big huge planting buckets that way they are moveable. i use grass, fruit peels, egg shells, veggie scrape that arent cooked, newspaper(non glossy),coffee grounds and the filters and sometimes i throw mulch in there.

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Richard

So I'm guessing that by "organic" you folks mean "non-synthetic" ?

For example, Neem Oil is a non-synthetic pest control material. It has been processed (distilled a bit) so that the concentration is the same in each bottle. Does it still count as "organic" this way?

Alfalfa meal has a rating of 2-0-3 and is nothing but finely chopped alfalfa. It takes 1.3 cubic feet (9.5 gallons) of it per year to feed a full-size crop-producing fruit tree. Alfalfa extract is a 14-0-21 liquid that only takes 1 cup a month to feed a crop-producing fruit tree -- but it is created by a series of chemical treatments, one of which involves Benzene. Does it still count as "organic" ?

Also, Potassium Nitrate and Sul-Po-Mag are minerals that are mined directly out of the earth, often crushed and then mechanically sorted to get a standard level of purity. There is no chemical processing. Do these count as "organic" ?

The reason I ask is because in California there is a completely different standard for "organic farming". According to the State, it is "methods which do not significantly impact the environment". What do you think about this definition ?

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momoese

Yes. Also no GMO's. You can grow a GMO seed organically but it's still not organic.

If the Neem tree is organically grown then yes. I use organic Neem oil for organic flea control on my animals.

Again was it grown organically? And Benzene is a known carcinogen so I'm not too sure on that one. I'd have to say no, not organic.

Yes

Bogus if it's anything like USDA's labeling system.

Richard

Momoese, thank you once again for your answers. It is a huge help to me in understanding consumer expectations about the plants I am raising.

Now about GMO's (genetically modified organisms):

From our past conversation, a micro-biological graft (protein slicing) to produce a change in genetic structure is a GMO. I think everyone agrees on this point.

I believe that "traditional hybrid" produced by sexual breeding (e.g., pollination) of two different species is o.k. with you, and not considered a GMO ?

An example of interest to me is the Jostaberry, which was an orchestrated cross pollination of Currant and Gooseberry, by first crossing the two with Worcesterberry, and then crossing those offspring, then crossing back in Worcesterberry to get a more fertile plant.

I'm not sure how you feel about thornless mutants produced by irradiation of seeds, growing the seeds, and then of those plants that are viable searching for one that is thornless and self-fertile. Black Satin Blackberry is an example. Is this a GMO ?

Finally, what about thorny plants whose roots are treated with a naturally occuring hormone that makes them thornless (extracted from say, an organically grown plant). The offspring and suckers of this plant will have thorns. Is this a GMO ?

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microfarmer

That looks alot better now that all the snow and ice is gone!!

Hey Richard, my Grandma would have called you a 'puddin' stick'...out to stir things up...

California has a different definition for alot of things! There is a difference between organic , Earth-friendly, and green.

Organic should mean non-synthetic, even though there has to be some processes to get it to the end user. Even the act of bicycling to the HD to pick up the bag of manure uses fossil fuels and is not Earth-friendly or green. The bags of stuff at HD are not produced from the steer and chickens on location, but trucked there using vast amounts of diesel fuel. Most times diesel fuel is used to procure the manure from where it lays, and the machines that pack and sort the yit need energy to run. Then there's the plastic in the bags, and God forbid the methane from all the steers. And that's just the manures. Peat production is killing the peat bogs. The minerals are all mined (some in open pit mines) including perlite and vermiculite. Fish emulsion depletes fish stocks. Kelp meal reduces kelp forests. There is nothing Earth-friendly or green about most organics. The best thing to use is compost from your own maker, and some other ammendments sparingly. Blood and bone meal products are by-products of the slaughterhouse industry. Shredded bark and bark nuggets are by-products of the logging industry. Their sale keeps that stuff outta the landfills and incinerators. In my opinion, it approaches more of a green product than some of the others. Other by-products that lean to the green side include spent grain from breweries, spent media from mushrooms, and shredded trees from tree trimming companies, and waste from vegetable canning plants. This stuff would be disposed of if not made into another product. Oh, bat guano is a green manure in that the bats are there naturally, and not artificially as in a beef or chicken ranch produced manures. That's my pudding!!

P.s. nice bump, Dean!

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Dean W.

Wow, I opened a can of worms.

I just want to grow things organically as possible.

Fish emulsion is a by product of the fishing industry.

How do you all do the multiple quotes?

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Dean W.

I think organic means the use of non-synthetic materials.

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microfarmer

Ok, I'll give you fish by-product source for fish emulsion. I'd like to think it was only the parts of the processed fish that aren't marketable. I'd hate to think it included the by-catch that isn't sorted from the target fish.

By the way, I grew up in the outskirts of Chicago...not much more than grass growing there, and not very Earth friendly or green.

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D_&_T

Has anybody used one called Garden Safe Fungicide3 made with Clarified Hydrophobic Extract of Neem Oil?

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Richard

Yep, works great as a deterent if used regularly. Has little effect on established outbreaks of mildew, black sooty mold, etc.

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paradisi

From an Australian perspective - - my bananas (lady fingers) were pups from plants that don't get more than 4m tall. My old mate still has them growing in his garden at that height. Ours grow to over 8 metres - I think its because I planted them on about a cubic metre of lemon grass cuttings - we had a lemon grass plant that got out of hand so I took off all of the green growth and buried it in the spot I would later plant the banana pups.

The bunches have mostly weighed between 25kg and 30kg and yield 50-60 bananas.

They got hand watered for the first five or six weeks - until the next lot of leaves appeared and since then have had nothing special. The chooks (chickens) free ranged for about 3 months earlier this year and that's the only added fertiliser they got. We have a good climate for bananas - nothing below 8 degrees celcius in the middle of winter and average rainfall of about 1700mm a year.

Only had two fall over - and that was primarily to the wieght of the bunches - and a lot of rain in the few days before they went over. I used to sell pups and I think I went a bit too crazy on those two plants and there wasn't enough lateral root growth - because of the number of pups removed.

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paradisi

I use compost cages - some bird cage wire made into a cylinder and filled with whatever I have on hand. I get a lot of vegetable scraps from a mate who owns an organic fruit and vegetable store - that goes to feed the guinea pigs and the chooks - anything they don't eat goes into the compost cage, as does layers of lawn clippings from my neighbours - we don't have lawn as such, and the chook and guinea pig poo. egg shells are crushed and added and anything that once grew goes in. I've cut down on the meat scraps because of the fly problem, but they are OK to add if you can handle maggots etc.

a pic of the current cage


The wire is pulled up every couple of days and moved to a nearby spot and the compost "turned" back into the cage - this speeds up composting and aeration

Here's an old cage that got converted into a tomato cage (left some of the compost in the bottom of the cage) - there's peas, snake beans, yakon, black russian tomatoes and some watermelon (gives the watermelon an early start)

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Dean W.

paradisi, I'll have to add my lemon grass stalks to the mix!

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Rmplmnz

We grow our bananas organically......local stable delivers....then we supplement with carbon (tree mulch, newspapers, cardboard)...all obtained for free (sans-labor).

We also add about 12,000 pounds (over 400 bags averaging over 30 #'s each) of leaves (mostly oak) each year.


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Leaves...leaves.....
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Richard

Composted horse manure is a fantastic way to fertilize organically. Use about 3.5 cubic feet or 100 liters per year per banana plant or mature semi-dwarf fruit tree in the ground to obtain 1 lb of Nitrogen and 0.7 lb of Potash per year. Supplementing with another Potash source to bring the total up to 1.5 lb per year is recommended.

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Rmplmnz

Thanks Richard..appreciate the extrapolation!

Dean W.

That's a great looking pile of compost! Your plants love the stuff, huh?

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