Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Question Revisited: Are Organic Pesticides Safe? Mike's Answer to Robbyn

Earlier in the season, my experiment with growing heirloom tomatoes (and other things) in different sorts of containers was fully underway, with varying success. I've written about some of my conclusions garnered afterward, and also raised the question of how to deal with pests, or in our case, a plague of stinkbugs that decimated the later tomatoes.

Was it the stress of the plants that made them susceptible? Was it the under-fertilizing? Was it massing them together so closely? The weather? Many other questions remain. I received valuable feedback about that very question after doing a web search on Organic Pesticides. I enjoyed hearing the varying perspectives from so many of you who have successfully found answers for your own situations.

In all the busy-ness that simultaneously ensued with my outside-of-the-home work training commencing at JUST that very time, my time here at the computer was cut much shorter. In that time period, I missed out on one very valuable and detailed response to my blog post...and amazingly, I discovered it just now, unexpectedly.

Mike from Plan Be of Braamekraal Farm wrote one great response, and I'd love to include the entire thing here. But being that it's now 1:32 A. M. my time and I'm too distractable to wait, I'm not waiting to write for permission to include his reply here in full. And his reply is TOO GOOD to simply quote in part.

So, for one of the very best feedbacks on the question of "Are Organic Pesticides Safe?" please run, jump, and leap to read Mike's Response to Robbyn...it's really that good.

Thank you, Mike, very belatedly!

And thank you to everyone else who responded in the comments section before.

I know it seems that I'm an opinion collector rather than practically DOING many of these things I ask about in the posts. That day will come...it's all part of the journey. First, we have to get our land, etc. But I really am benefitting from not just seeing how everyone's doing THEIR "homesteading" but also beginning to understand many of the underlying reasons for specific choices. I'm finding so many of those reasons to be sound.

Which will give me a sound rooting, I hope, in endeavors yet to be realized.

Because, as they say (they who? the Infamous They!), "as the twig is bent, so grows the tree."



Thank you, Mike, for your thoughtful and thorough response. I'm sorry I only discovered it NOW :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Thank you so much for that rave review! :-D

Ever since writing the post I have worried that it sounded just a bit too preachy -- a bit too much of a lecturing tone... but what's written is written and cannot be unwritten.

Of course, as soon as one writes something like that, the universe is bound to soon come calling with a great big clue-by-four. In my case in the shape of a mass invasion of Cabbage Beetles. The temptation to use some spray or other was strong, I tell you!

Don't sweat over being thought of as a collector rather than a doer... first we must build our homestead in our heads and hearts before we can ever find the courage to build them in the world.