no worms for me

Wanting to grow stuff organically is a lot more difficult than it sounds. There are reasons why scientists, chemists, and businessmen designed synthetic fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides. Here are some instances:

1) But what big weeds you have! — I’m sure my neighbors are at this very moment plotting to buy a flame thrower for the purpose of eradicating the knee-high weeds in my front side yard. A bottle of weed-killer ($11) and 7 days would have solved that weed problem, but nooooo, I had to go all organic. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, but I didn’t get far. There was a bunch of ladybugs chillin’ out in that weed patch. Ladybugs are supposed to be good for gardens (I have green and black aphids on the menu) so if I tear our all those weeds (or cut them or spray them to death), I’m effectively killing the ladybugs’ habitat and food source. So I only cleared out a patch of the ugliest weeds and left the rest.

2) Damn aphids! — Like I said, I have green aphids attacking my roses, and black aphids attacking my lemon and cherry plants. I bought the ladybugs last year and they took care of the green aphids, but not the black ones. When I saw the aphids a few days ago, I ran to the weed-patch/ladybug habitat and carried a few beetles to the aphid-infested plants hoping they would munch on the aphids. However, they just meandered all over the plant. I’m beginning to think of those black-spotted red beetles as lazybugs. Over the next few days, I’m going to bring a few ladybugs to the infested plants daily. I hope that the ladybugs will mate, lay eggs on the plant, and their larvae will eat the aphids. Call me the ladybug matchmaker. If I wasn’t so organically-inclined, 2 or 3 days of spraying with aphid-insecticides and my problem would be solved.

3) Weeds or slugs? — We can never win. If you want to suppress weeds with ground cover like newspaper or leaves or wood chips, you’re creating a five-star resort for slugs. Otherwise, you’ll have weeds. Then you have to do weeding. If you don’t use herbicides, weeding would entail squatting down and pulling out weeds one by one. And when you have around 5000 sq feet of garden/yard to de-weed and you can almost hear over a hundred weed seeds sprouting every time you pull up one weed, then you know what it feels like to be outnumbered. That’s why gardeners are always out there in the garden. You snooze, you lose. Don’t even get me started on the slugs. My M.O. is every time I see one, I kill it.

4) Eww, worms! — Once in a while when I’m digging the soil or pulling up weeds, I see a cutworm or leatherjacket or some kind of evil worm (I know it’s evil because it’s not an earthworm). First I squeal, then I pick it up with my shovel, throw it onto the concrete sidewalk, and either chop it until it bursts or squish it until it pops. Blegh. Gross! Those are the times I have to summon up the most courage. Those are the times when I have to be brave. Nature is a wild thing, so it is my job as the gardener to tame it. I believe there are some pesticides you can use to kill evil worms but I’m going to try to encourage more of their natural predators first. Apparently, ground beetles eat cutworms and leatherjackets.

5) It takes HOW long to create compost? — I love the idea of returning to earth what we took from it. And “black gold” just sounds too cool. But I have to admit, if you’re a busy (read lazy) person like me, and you don’t want to go turn/water/add/activate your compost every two weeks, then you can expect your compost pile to take around 6 months to decompose. But here’s a tip: you don’t have to wait until it’s fully decomposed before adding it to the soil that you’re over-wintering (i.e. leaving it bare over winter). What I did last November was to dump the compost that had been rotting for the past 4 months onto the soil and roughly dig them in. Turns out earthworms dig it! Punny, huh? Let them work that compost into your soil. Come spring time, you’ll have rich soil teeming with earthworms. Or you could drive 5 minutes to the nearest OSH, buy a bag of compost and use that instead.

So it’s pretty clear to me why organically grown food costs more: there is just more labor involved. There are always quick fixes for pests and weeds, which means it all boils down to what is most important to you. If you want to build a diverse ecosystem in your garden, you have to spend time listening to your soil and understanding the creatures around you (yeah, I know, this sounds so Pocahontas). I have the luxury of time (since I can just buy from the farmer’s market when my garden isn’t producing), but many others don’t. I guess a good attitude to have is to be respectful of produce and try not to waste it, because it is the sweat and blood of those who planted it, organically or otherwise.