Potatoes are Good!

Shortly after the discovery of the Americas by Europeans, sometime in the early 1500’s, there was a not uncommon famine in France. The French king at the time was fascinated with the potato, among other foods new to Europe, from the Americas.

The French people, though starving, were dubious and wouldn’t plant them or eat them. The brilliant king, knowing that potatoes were a great food source that could help end the famine, had his potato field surrounded by armed soldiers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The French thought that if the king valued this foodstuff so highly, it had to be a truly wonderful thing.

Thus was ultimately born the French fry, amid other delights that French chefs have created since then.

Help me out People....

1) Why it’s okay to spray DDT inside of homes and huts in Africa, to stop malaria and typhus, but it was banned for use finally, in the U.S. in 1972, and world wide, finally, in 1985? (Did you know that eggshells are 10-12% thinner in the U.S. today than they were before we used 1.3 billion lbs. of DDT in the U.S.)

2) Why we used almost 4 lbs. of chemical pesticides per person, in the U.S. in 2007, when there are completely safe, effective organic pest controls that don’t poison the water, destroy our topsoil, and create a catalog of health problems, including birth defects and cancer? Our EPA and FDA says these things are okay. Why is that? I know all the excuses, but why, really, why is that the case?

3) Why we complain about food prices, global warming, destruction of the environment generally, when most of us have some land we could grow at least some of our own vegetables? (My 85 yr. old mother grows all her own lettuce in a couple of pots on her porch in a mobile home park in Spokane, WA.)

4) Why we buy the “Risk Management” garbage that our government, and the U.N. accept on our behalf? (That’s the excuse “Risk Management,” they use to keep their sponsors, the drug, chemical and oil companies happy. It means they decided that the risk to our health and our environment is less by using their poisons than by not using them.) Nonsense! There’s not one problem that isn’t solved already by completely safe and organic methods.

If you can help me understand any of that, please do! And then I’ll have a lot more questions about things I just simply cannot understand.

He's a Gardening Comedian, Right?

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That’s what I asked my organic gardening friend who had taped the TV show for me to see. It was a famous gardener with a regular show and an expensive book out on “how to” grow vegetables.

The fellow was actually promoting not feeding the plant, only the soil---and then proceeded to kill the soil and feed the plant—through a tube stuck in the ground down to root level!

But no, sadly, it wasn’t a comedy. I didn’t know whether to laugh at the humor, or cry at the possibility that someone would actually do what he was promoting, even though it was an extremely complex set of instructions. I was told the fellow had a PhD in something.

He was seriously putting whiskey, liquid soap, Coca Cola, and some other less harmful stuff in his planting hole. Whiskey is often used for sterilization, as the alcohol kills bacteria and microbes. Liquid soap is intended to kill bacteria and microbes. Who knows what’s in Coca Cola, because the recipe is locked up in a safe somewhere. At best it will rust a nail, kill a worm and draw ants. How anyone would believe that any of that stuff could possibly “feed the soil” is well beyond my ability to comprehend.

Fertile soil is a universe of vibrant life. Yet here the fellow was, right on TV, advising people to wipe it all out—and feed the plant through a tube!

Nothing is more common than dirt. Nothing is less common than fertile, uncontaminated dirt.

If we want to survive at all, we need to feed our soil. Our soil will feed us.

The drug and chemical companies, among others, have a vested interest in our continuing to destroy the soil.

If we were getting real nutrition, we wouldn’t need so many of their drugs.

If we want our soil to be able to produce vegetables and grain loaded with vitamins and minerals, we won’t buy their chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Feed the soil what nature created it with in the first place. It’s much cheaper in the short run---and it’s infinitely cheaper in the long run.

Roses or Lollipops?

Chocolates and Roses are traditional, ladies love them and retailers love that men know that ladies love them. I submit the ancient adage that there are only two things that money can’t buy: Love and Home Grown Tomatoes.

Did you ever give a lady a homegrown tomato?

I’ve given ladies thousands of pounds of them over the years—in front of my wife, of course. Let me tell you, no lady I’ve ever given a tomato to would have rather had a pound of Godiva Chocolates or two dozen roses. Think a box of chocolates or a dozen roses helps your standing, gentlemen? Grow a tomato.

Rats

Rat Traps

After posting my last blog, "Dog Poison," I received this from a gardener near Seattle: "Lee, good notice. I had a friend who had a horse die after eating rat poisoned oats left in a bag somewhere in the barn." A. M.

We know how smart rats are, how much they can destroy, how many diseases they spread and their historical role in carrying the fleas responsible for wiping out a third of the population of Europe on at least one occasion.

We can freely buy deadly poisons in any hardware or garden store. We can buy very clever traps made of plastic somewhere in China. I don’t know what anyone might want with a live rat they caught around the house, but you can actually buy traps that won’t kill them.

If you've ever seen a poisoned animal die, it's something you know you never want to see again, even if it's just a rat.

Traps, simple old snap traps, made in Pennsylvania by the Victor Co., are a very cheap and humane way to get rid of rats. And they won't kill your dog, cat, or anything else even if they do manage to eat the dead rat before you can remove it from the trap. I've used Victor traps for mice and rats since I was a little kid on the farm and they've always handled the problem. I've used pieces of banana, peanut butter, bacon, etc., as bait, all of which work well on mice or rats. Mice and rats both love peanut butter, but very often a rat will lick the peanut butter off the trigger without setting it off. That's when a lot of people get the idea that the traps don't work and resort to poison.

Sometimes people set the trap, but 2-3 days later the trap hasn't been touched and they still have rats--think they don't work and resort to poison.

Whether it's poisoned food, fruit, nuts, or anything else a rat likes to eat, they won't touch it for several days. They know it's there, but they're very wary creatures with lots of enemies. They'll just keep an eye on it without approaching it until they're sure it's safe.

What works for me: I know rats aren't going to go near anything new for a day or two, at least. I put a trap, un-set, where I've seen the rat, located such that my little dog can't get to it. On and around the trap, I drop bits of peanut butter. When the rat gets comfortable with eating the peanut butter on and around the trap, I then put it only on the trigger--but I still haven't set the trap. Now, maybe as much as a week after first starting the hunt, when the rat is happy and feeling safe at his peanut butter feeding station--he isn't. I've set the trap. Once in awhile he just licks the peanut butter off without setting the trap. Then I have to get more clever in the placement of the peanut butter, and/or modify the trigger so that the trap will now go off with only the weight of a strong breath.

The friend with the $2,000 vet bill for the poisoned dog passed along his method, which is the best I've ever heard. I used it the other day and caught the dirty rat that was getting into my compost bin. Of all the ways I've tried over the years, this is suddenly my absolute my favorite:

* Put 2 Victor rat snap traps, right out of the package, in my compost bin and tossed in two whole peanuts, (doesn't matter if they're raw, roasted, salted etc.) not caring how close they were to the traps. I just wanted to get the rat used to the traps being there, but they weren't set.

* After 2 days, the peanuts hadn't been disturbed.

* I cracked them open, just enough that the smell of the peanuts inside would waft out.

* The next day the 2 whole peanuts were gone, shells and all.

* I then inserted a cracked, but not fully opened peanut onto the trigger of each trap, but didn't set the traps. The next morning the 2 peanuts were gone; shells and all.

* Now I set the traps, baited just as above, with a peanut inserted on each trigger

* Next morning, there she was! A fat, very pregnant female rat (I'm a farm boy--I notice such things.) had been instantly killed sometime in the night.

I left a couple of peanuts in the compost bin. If and when they disappear, I'll go through the steps above.

As I said earlier, this method is very cheap, safe, simple, clean, and as far as I can see, 100% effective.

Thank you, David T!

Something Borrowed

“It’s okay to borrow something, just as long as you return it in better condition than it was when you borrowed it.”

That’s what my grandpa told me when I was about 12. He didn’t have a tool he needed there on the farm in Missouri, but knew his neighbor did. He knew I felt awkward in going with him to borrow the tool.

When he took it back my whole attitude had changed about borrowing. I had my head up and I was proud to be part of it. Grandpa used the tool, a piece of farm equipment, for a few days, cleaned it thoroughly, oiled and shined it up so it looked almost new. It was in far better shape than the day we borrowed it.

I’ve often thought of that over the last half century, and the lesson has served me well. A few months ago I needed to haul some things, so I asked my neighbor if I could use his truck. I wasn’t sheepish about it, as people sometimes are. I used it for a couple of hours, and when I returned it, it had been to the car wash and the gas tank was full. He was amazed—and very happy. If I ever need to borrow it again, he insists, I need but ask.

I think of the land and the soil that way. I’m borrowing it. It’s been here serving our ancestors for all our 100,000-year history. We “own it” for a very tiny little portion of that. If we survive, it will be serving our progeny for more thousands of years. It’s no less a crime to destroy a flower bed with chemicals than it is to destroy 10,000 acres of fertile ground. If not today, somewhere in the future what we did to that little flowerbed will matter no less than a crime done to 10,000 acres.

I’ve always applied Grandpa’s wisdom. If I can’t give the soil I’m using back in better condition than it was when I borrowed it, I don’t borrow and use it at all.

It's a sickening statistic that we've already lost 3 of the 4 feet of top soil that covered this nation 250 years ago. That's not the way to return something borrowed.