in The Greenhouse
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
in RRResearch
-
in Skeptic Wonder
-
in The Large Picture Blog
-
in Life of a Lab Rat
-
in PLEKTIX
-
in C6-H12-O6
-
in Games with Words
-
in The Biology Files
-
in Rule of 6ix
-
in inkfish
-
in Moss Plants and More
-
in Disease Prone
-
in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
in Angry by Choice
-
in The Astronomist
-
in Catalogue of Organisms
-
in Variety of Life
-
in The Culture of Chemistry
-
in Field Notes
-
in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
in A is for Aspirin
-
in The Phytophactor
-
in Pleiotropy
-
in Chinleana
-
in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
in The View from a Microbiologist
-
in Labs
-
in History of Geology
-
in The Curious Wavefunction
-
in Doc Madhattan
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Showing posts with label chemical-free gardens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemical-free gardens. Show all posts
Are my lawns and gardens chemical free?
OK, here's a big confession. No! Everything out there is nothing but chemicals, and organic too; no inorganic lawn or garden at all. Has that clarified the issue? In all honesty, one of our lawns had become a total field of blue violets and thousands of seedlings were germinating promising things would get worse, so it was treated with an herbicide. A well-meaning neighbor asked if the violets had been "poisoned"? No, not in the sense that you mean; they were treated with an artificial plant hormone that kills dicots by affecting their physiology. And next some chemicals will be used on azaleas and rhododendrons to prevent clorosis, iron-deficiency. Small gardens are sometimes hard to maintain without some chemicals because you cannot sustain many losses. Our gardens seldom need insecticides. A row cover protects the broccoli from Lepidopteran herbivores, and every now and then an infestation requires some insecticidal soap, and our fountain pond is treated with Bt bacteria to prevent them from breeding swarms of mosquitos. Unfortunately, tree holes abound, and so do tree-hole mosquitos, a not good species in terms of disease vectoring. And fertilizer, yes, it becomes handy in intensive cultivation situations. Chemicals for certain, but it's a funny thing, plants don't care about where they obtain their nitrogen. So, no again. Not chemical free.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)