Help with research paper?

[RJ_Hythloday]

If any one could answer some or all questions and give me permission to use it would be greatly appreciated. This is for an English2 paper, and I get to choose my own topic. I'm majoring in Horticulture and then want to get a Masters in Soil Reclamation. You can PM me if you don't want to post replies here. Pictures would be great also. I will be doing field research asking these same questions as well. I think that this might be a bit of a biased community here, but I'd really like to find out.

Do you consider yourself a conventional or unconventional gardener? What do you consider conventional or unconventional gardening methods?

Have you heard of BIM beneficial indigenous microorganisms are?

If so what do you know about it?

Do you compost? What methods?

Have you heard of AVCT or ACT aerated vermicompost or compost tea?

If so what do you know about it?

Do you practice sustainable, chemical free gardening?

What do you know of terrapreta and or biochar?

Have you heard of or do you use mycorrhiza?

Do you practice companion planting?

Have you ever heard of BSFL black soldier fly larvae? Would you consider them a pest or beneficial?

Do you use or have you heard of BT bacillus thuringes


If you practice any of the above methods did you seek out scientific research before putting them to use?


This is the research analysis I'm using this week.

Organic gardening is very popular and gets a great deal of attention, rightly so. It is in most cases the healthier source for your food. What most people don't realize is how much of "organic" gardening is a label, and costly paperwork to satisfy the powers that be. Most small "mom and pop" farmers can't afford what it takes to be certified "organic". What many people aren't aware of is that they can also choose chemical/pesticide free sustainable agriculture that might actually be cleaner and healthier than certified organic crops. Our Founding Fathers were greatly concerned with the health of the soil and the tendency for farmers in their day to use up the land and move on leaving used up soil behind that wouldn't be usable for generations. Today big corporations can afford the advertising to push chemical down our throats and make us believe we need our fruits and vegetables to be blemish free and we shouldn't tolerate pest damage to our ornamental flora. One of my favorite books to date in this area is "Weeds Guardians of the Soil", the author outright blames big industry for the lack of soil health through out America in his time over sixty years ago. The last sixty years haven't changed that trend.

There is a trend today building up on the internet to practice sustainable chemical free gardening in back yards all over America. There are alot of practices that have mostly anectdotal evidence and not enough scientific proof. They work well together and I have seen proven results on my own. Some of them are BIM beneficial indigenous microorganisms, terrpreta or biochar, vermicomposting, AVCT aerated vermicompost tea, ACT aerated compost tea, companion planting, and mycorrhiza.

I intend to bring to light some of these methods and see if I can find any scientific research to back up the anectdotal. This is pretty long term since I also intend to do some of my own lab and field work for my masters thesis a few years from now.

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf....090168.002145

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/0012-9658%281998%29079%5B2082AMFSA%5D2.0.CO%3B2

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co.../07SU_PGPR.pdf

http://books.google.com/books?id=dXN...ompost&f=false

http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglib...ibwelcome.html

http://www.soilandhealth.org/copyfor...ookcode=010149

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_lib.../WeedsToC.html

http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglib...yrbk/lsom.html

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner...ing-seminar%2F

http://www.pinoyorganics.com/2010/04/05/gil-carandang/

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/...A%5D2.0.CO%3B2

[habitat_gardener]

Unconventional, all vegan organic (except for the occasional horse manure as long as it doesn't contain dewormers), no chemicals. I've heard of all these things. I'm skeptical of biochar and would put it last on my list of things to try or research. I took a class in BIM from someone from the Philippines who'd given a talk at the Ecological Farming Conference, but haven't grown my own cultures (yet). I've also taken Elaine Ingham's class on AACT. I compost in bins -- make about 300 gallons of compost a year -- and get lots of beneficial BSF larvae in the bins in summer. They work fast! I may be getting smaller quantities of compost as a result, but especially when I add kitchen waste, the level of materials in the bins goes down several inches per day. I add materials, water, let sit for 2-5 months, sift, and use.

Since I grow lots of brassicas, I don't add mycorrhizae to my soil.

I surround my garden as much as possible with plants for pollinators, mostly natives. Rather than planting in rows, I plant different plants together to confuse pests and attract beneficials. So one bed has tomatoes, green onions, stock, carrots, chrysanthemums, and around the edges, pots of 4 kinds of peppers, eggplant, and strawberries. Another bed has blackberries, echinacea, mints in pots, bush beans, 6 types of pole beans, globe gilia, oregano, sage, thyme, irises, and yarrow. I haven't found persuasive evidence that companion planting works, but what does work is (1) interspersing plants for pollinators and beneficial insects with edibles and (2) avoiding monocultures as much as possible.

I studied hort before I had a garden, but have found it's most effective to try things and research them as needed. For instance, I had squash bugs and cucumber beetles one year, but learned that early plantings as well as certain varieties are more attractive to them. So I planted later and changed the varieties that I grow. The following year, I saw one beetle on one plant, and haven't seen them since. Rust is a big problem at the community garden, especially because so many plots are not maintained, so last fall, after some research, I added corn meal and molasses to my raspberry beds (as well as the usual large dose of compost and mulch) to see if I could help my plants resist it longer. My plant this fall are healthier than in previous falls, though the fruit flies that laid eggs in my blackberries may have moved on to some of my raspberries. I will have to make more traps (sugar + alcohol).

One question that I find endlessly fascinating is how do you know what you think you know? Where do you get your information? Whom do you trust? I like Linda Chalker-Scott's summaries of hort myths, but when I'm researching what to do about rust or maggots or whatever, I use the google, ask the crowd on tomatoville, read the chapters in my UC references (or look online), check a few other reliable books, and then do whatever is easiest. If the remedy seems to involve spraying or buying a certain chemical (even if organic), I research further to find out what I can do to avoid the problem next year.

I've also learned that many "problems" can be resolved by reframing them or waiting. So if I have ants in the compost bin, that means it's too dry. I can water it and sift it next week. If I see aphids on (one of, usually) my brassicas and it's early spring, that means the food supply for the beneficials is ready! I let them be and wait for their predators to arrive. If the towhees disturbed the seedbed where I just planted kohlrabi, that means they were delighted that I put down some new compost full of bugs! I want birds in my garden (even if they have been tasting far too many of my tomatoes!), so next time I put the compost down a week before planting, and then I protected the seedbed with hardware cloth and/or row cover.

I let some "weeds" grow in my garden, and ruthlessly go after others. Borage, nettles, violas, cerinthe, nasturtiums, russian kale, miner's lettuce, mache, and native wildflowers reseed themselves. I get rid of every last piece of bindweed and bermuda grass, as well as the euphorbias and red valerian that someone planted years ago. I keep an eye on the queen anne's lace, love in a mist, and calendulas, which would take over if they could but are easy to pull when young.

In a small garden, it's hard to tell if a certain practice or amendment made a difference, or if it's just the weather. Each year is different. Still, my theory is that as an organic garden matures, it becomes more resilient, even if surrounded by pests and disease from other gardens.

[doublehelix]

For an English paper this is fine. However, if this were a scientific paper you have some statements that show prejudice and would suggest a biased research path. Your findings would have little or no credibility if your hypothesis is this lopsided. I could PM you details if you want.

I have studied some of these things you mention. By this I mean that I had a hypothesis, set up an experiment, created a control, recorded results and measured results against the purpose of the experiment. The results did not make me happy, but they were true.


"big corporations can afford the advertising to push chemical down our throats and make us believe we need our fruits and vegetables to be blemish free"...actually it is the consumer that has demanded blemish free produce, not the chemical companies. If you don't believe this, go to a farmers market where you would expect the consumer to be more savy and more "organic" and watch what sells. The odd shaped, or blemished produce gets left behind. What do you purchase when you are in the grocery store? We did this to ourselves.

I don't like chemicals. Can I live without them? Sure. Do I have the same production results? Never. The sad reality of it is this: With commercial fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides and antibiotics we are currently able to feed the 7 billion people of Earth. If we gave up these practices it is estimated that as much as 1/3 or over 2 billion people would die. Which is why I just roll my eyes when someone tries to condemn the big chemical companies for what they do as being unethical. Would letting billions starve for the good of nature be more or less ethical? I don't even pretend to have an answer, just opinions.


Just a note here, but "a lot" is two words not one and "throughout" is one word not two. English teachers don't like those sort of things.

Good luck with your paper. Sounds like a fun project.

Feel free to contact me if you want.

-S

[ireilly]

Sorry to be off-topic but I just noticed that the parsing engine that generates auto-smileys created one in your second hyperlink from a "colon D" substring. It should still work though as the properties show the original text. Interesting. Never noticed that before.

You have laid out an ambitious path for yourself in your future endeavors and that alone is to your credit for sure. Maybe you can share some of your results with us.

[RJ_Hythloday]

Thanks for the replies so far, the smilie is weird, Original I'd love to know what research and results you got, I will definitely share my results here. I think I'm going to have to narrow my research down some for the finished paper. I certainly am biased, I guess I need a way to keep that out of the interviewing in my field research.

[RinTinTin]

You omitted an important Chapter in soil reclamation: Cover crops. Here's a link you might find useful:

Home Page - Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd Edition - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

[habitat_gardener]

Some other resources...

The Timber Press book entitled "The truth about organic gardening"

The website of a public garden that has gone all organic, Lotusland.

The book Teaming with Microbes, one of the most compelling arguments for going organic.

[RJ_Hythloday]

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

Some other resources...

The Timber Press book entitled "The truth about organic gardening"

The website of a public garden that has gone all organic, Lotusland.

The book Teaming with Microbes, one of the most compelling arguments for going organic.

Thanks, I'd forgotten all about teeming w/ microbes, and I'll check the others out too.

[amideutch]

Two books I'll throw in the mix are;

Nature Farming and Microbial Applications by Xu, Parr and Umemura

Handbook of Microbial Biofertilizers by Rai

[RinTinTin]

FYI, the book I listed @ Home Page - Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd Edition - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education is online for reading. The entire contents are at that site, and if you look at the lower left in the navigation panel, there is a link to a downloadable PDF version. I downloaded the entire book to my HD. I will purchase a hard-copy once I move...I already probably have 300 lbs of books to move...the digital version will do me fine for now.

[Barbee]

Some food for thought from me..

Just by reading your questions, it seems to me that you're trying to compare farmers with backyard gardeners. So I think I'd pick one or the other and focus your research in that particular area. You can't compare farmers (conventional or certified organic).. who make a living, or at least a huge chunk of it, with a backyard gardener...who does not rely on production to support their family throughout the year.

I hope this makes sense