Pesticides and Organic Growing - simple guide.

[maryjohn]

What does this have to do with organic growing? I read the first half and found nothing but synthetics.

Just let me get this out of the way: I did not join this forum to argue the virtues of organic growing. The title implies these chemicals play a role in organic pest control. To use these products an call yourself organic is fraud IMO.

 

[Lazyman]

OK, I'd be interested to hear your take on Floramite/Avid. I've been growing for years and have tried every spray and organic pesticide under the sun, and Floramite is the only thing I've ever used that actually worked on spidermites. I won't stop using it, but I want to hear your $.02 if you have time.

Thanks

 

[maryjohn]

My take?

My take is not so relevant. I am like everyone else who isn't a saint. I have rules and sometimes I break them. But I don't pretend otherwise.

But if you sell it as organic and it isn't you should go to a special hell.

 

[barletta]

Munchy, Munchy!!

DE sucked at killing gnats for me. I hope that it does a good job spread on all the windowsills and exterior door jambs, cause that's where it ended up, lol. A healthy layer of perlite (I know, not organic, lol) and dry pots fixed that.

I have to recco neem and lady bugs 100% for mites/thrips. 3 real neem treatments (I mix mine with purrty warm water, cocowet, and either kelp or silicone SALTS, lol), and 500 ladybugs per 1k of light worked for me. Now I have a lil lady bug population, and haven't seen ANY baddie bugs on my plants in a while.
Neem - $7 Lady bugs - $10 cocowet - $3.

 

[Lazyman]

Sorry Maryjohn, I didn't specify Voodoo but thanks for your input.

Special hell? Egads, I think I'll need a 12-fold map just to find my way around the theme park of horrors that will await me upon my death. Ha!

 

[JackTheGrower]

Some of us want immediate solutions to our pest problems without harm to microbial levels and vermiculture.

?? Worms

umm worm castings I would use the Sun to get rid of the Zoo..

I was asking what pest can't be dealt with more naturally but maybe as a program of prevention and discouragement?

What pests are so dangerous?

 

[jaykush]

best pest control are pest predators everything has an enemy that loves to eat it.

 

[maryjohn]

Jay that's just the best organic control. All you have to risk is the health of your self and planet, and you can always have perfect plants and yields. After all, we are growing pot, not predators. We are growing pot here not predators!

 

[Voodoo]

I actually have no personal experience with Avid (abamectin) or Floramite (bifenazate) as its a bifenazte is a carbonate and frankly a little more aggressive than I would go and abamectin is a warning label pesticide. At first Floramite looks great, Canada has approved Floramite for cucumber, tomatoes and peppers. But, I gotta tell ya, I got a bit hesitant when I got through the first paragraph of the label:

"Floramite is a selective miticide for the control of a variety of mite pests on all types of ornamental plants, including bedding plants, flowering plants, foliage plants, bulb crops, perennial plants and woody plants. Floramite may also be applied to fruit trees which will not bear for a minimum of 12 months."

then later in the label..

"Do not make more than two (2) applications of Floramite per crop per year."

then in the application section..

"Floramite is registered for control of mite pests on greenhouse, shadehouse, nursery, field, landscape and interiorscape grown ornamentals."

and then again in the summary of findings..

"Bifenazate has not yet received a human carcinogen classification since bifenazate is being considered as a non-food use pesticide and both the mouse and rat chronic toxicity/carcinogenicity studies are not required at this time."

Avid is a different animal. Its non toxic to earthworms and birds but is highly toxic to bees, a non issue for sinsemilla. It binds to the soil at which point it has a very short half life - 8-21 hours. It is labeled for use on ornamentals with no mention of use on edible food crops. In other words, it is only for use on ornamentals. They did offer this one sentence on the label as a hint that you don't want to use avid on fruiting plants:

"Do not use in citrus nurseries."

Unfortunately, as pretty as marijuana plants are, they definitely are not considered ornamentals. Going further, Floramite is toxic to earthworms, fish, bees and birds. Carbonates are nonsystemic pesticides, so at least you can wash it off in theory before harvest, but there are several articles about patients having adverse issues and complications which are attributed to Floramite - reason enough to stay away from it.

Now to be fair, a lot of clients tell our field techs ridiculous things like they're going to die if they're exposed to permethrin even though they have no prior history of sensitivity... I own a pest control company, you get the idea. I would try out a few other products that are labeled for fruit bearing plant use (bifenthrin, permethrin, cyfluthrin, etc).

To set the record straight, while there are purists out there who refuse to use pesticides, this article is a guide for organic growers in dire circumstances who have no other alternatives and growers who want to use pesticides but don't want to poison their benefactors. I'm not here to start a fight, I only want to offer advice based on label recommendations and lab findings to improve our collective intelligence on the subject.

Oh and CT, I answered in the other post as well; if you google the chemical followed by "environmental fate" youll be able to find all the EPA findings on the chemical. "MSDS" (material safety data sheet) is another good search. If you can't find earthworm and bacterial information in the environmental fate sheet then searching for the chemical name followed by "earthworm" and "bacteria" will probably net you results from the numerous studies that dow, bayer, etc have up.

 

[Voodoo]

sorry just had too...

LOL this is my new background.

 

[maryjohn]

To set the record straight, while there are purists out there who refuse to use pesticides, this article is a guide for organic growers in dire circumstances who have no other alternatives and growers who want to use pesticides but don't want to poison their benefactors. I'm not here to start a fight, I only want to offer advice based on label recommendations and lab findings to improve our collective intelligence on the subject.

Excuse me, but If I walk into a bar in NYC and start ragging on the yankees, I am saying the wrong thing in the wrong room in a painfully obvious way. So obvious that if a fight breaks out and I claim ignorance, I appear disingenuous.

You know, that's a great discussion - for conventional gardeners, who should be just as concerned about safety.

I am not the purest purist, but there are limits. This is a forum about organic soil gardening, and these products have no place in an organic grow.

I would go further, and say that you have no science to back up the safety of these products when used for growing marijuana for the purpose of smoking. You have none because there is none. Tobacco is maybe close, but tobacco washes easily, unlike MJ buds. And indoors, almost nobody washes.

If you are about to lose your crop to pests, and are thinking of turning to better living through chemistry, please reconsider. How much do you need that weed? What are you willing to risk? There are alternatives to chemical poisons. They may be more expensive, or less effective, or harder to implement, but it's worth it to stay organic. Most of us have made a commitment to ourselves and our planet, and we should encourage each other to keep it.

If you are a commercial organic grower, people pay a premium for your product and spend energy seeking it. Your customers take a leap of faith and trust you with their health, and you have an ethical responsibility not to commit fraud. Organic with "a bit" of synthetic pesticide is not at all organic.

You want to call yourself organic? Pay the price like the rest of us. Oh hey, and reap the rewards too!

 

[vonforne]

Didn´t you post this once before? ^^^^^^

V

 

[DARC MIND]

Besides, don't you watch Penn and Teller's Bullshit? Organics are a fraud. If every farmer on earth converted to organic food growing, 2 billion people would starve to death. Professor Virtanen was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1945 for this discovery, and sadly it's still true today.

IMO, this is BS
This would only be true if every farmer right now, this very moment switched to organics, then yea maybe 2 billion will starve. But if they slowly started building a healthy soil food web, recycle live stock waste properly and use many organic methods that are proven to and are working today, then I really would like to think the number of deaths by starvation wouldn’t be so high.
Organics to me is how we as a whole should grow our feature crops. ther are many great people who are devoting ther lives too new ways of growing crops and with organics we can sustainably feed most if not all people in need.
I think most organic farmers are not practicing monoculture and using IPM (were chemical pesticide is the last resort and looked down on) along with natural predators to keep ther crops safe.
Natural predators need to eat and organic gardeners/farmers know this, so we don’t mind a few bad critters here and there. We actually encourage them and some like my self let certain undesired plants get infested.

Pesticide companies should be culturing native beneficial insects like we do live stock, cities should all be composting and slowly riding land fills. To me this whole global worming and green thinking has proven to many that we can change are ways of living and how we feed our brothers and sisters.
Today there is now abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably, this BS on organics is a fraud or wont work to me is propaganda. Many don’t understand the importance of agriculture, this is not just about feeding people in need, it has an impact on medicine, energy and people/countries working together. Organics and its methods, to me has the ability to reverse the dependency on many big boy corporations and bring people closer together. just look at all the community gardens that are now popping up, look at all the green thinking and ther television shows.

Organics is not expensive just ask a few of the organic heads here, small farmers can profit and ther in no need to use commercial fertilizers or many pesticides on the shelves today.
crop rotations, beneficial insects/plants, green manures, green energy, the list can go on but most important is people working together w/ nature to feed her children. This to me, is what big brother corporations fear the most, Organics! And the methods of agriculture/science that revolve around it, witch will bring people together. It has always brought people together, since the hunter gather stage of humanity.

Sorry about the rambling, this is an organic forum and that comment just rubbed me the wrong way. I for one support organic gardening every way I can and in my heart I believe organics and the study of nature has and always will be for the greater good.
i don’t use chemicals to rid of any critters thought I do sometimes think twice about using them, IMO they do more harm then good (most of the times) but again I do sometimes consider using them, well only on the dreadful ants coming from my neighbors yards. Other then that, nature has always had beneficial warriors on the front lines, looking out for my garden and I do what I can to support her troops.
IMO starvation is the cause of lack of interest and financial gain, here a quote

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

some links
vegetable gardens in Havana
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8213617.stm
one man one cow (biodynamic farming)
http://www.abundantlifefarm.com/index.php/Video20080630/Video
sky scraper crops
http://weburbanist.com/2008/03/30/5-urban-design-proposals-for-3d-city-farms-sustainable-ecological-and-agricultural-skyscrapers/
green farming article
http://farmindustrynews.com/biofuels/energy/green-farming-equation-0508/

 

[JackTheGrower]

Didn´t you post this once before? ^^^^^^

V

I'll try this again..

Posts are getting sequenced according to their date and time but new ones are getting assigned newer times and date than ones already in the thread.

Watch this one reposition as well?

 

[vonforne]

I'll try this again..

Posts are getting sequenced according to their date and time but new ones are getting assigned newer times and date than ones already in the thread.

Watch this one reposition as well?

That is too fnny. Some newbie will get all confused with the wrong answer.

V

 

[barletta]

That is too fnny. Some newbie will get all confused with the wrong answer.

So how much lime should I add to the mix?

 

[maryjohn]

That is too fnny. Some newbie will get all confused with the wrong answer.

V

It's a post about using pesticides in an organic forum. It's conversations between people who have their minds made up and tend to just repeat the same thing in different words.

So it still works when it's jumbled!

Organic guys are not about to abandon organic growing and the guy who runs a pesticide applying company isn't about to have an epiphany either. Throw in someone or two, trying to see both sides, and you have yourself a thread that accomplishes nothing while making a lot of noise.

 

[wuzzenme]

I try to do my gardening organically but I suppose I am not an absolute 100% purist. I found some info in this thread useful. For example I assumed pyrethrums were an organic option for pests. This post informed me that they were often suspended in a petrolleum distillate which I did not know. I mostly read the organics section in this forum and I benefited from this post though some felt it was apparently a terrible misplaced post.