Organic Gardening- The Dark Side

We try to keep an Organic garden. I love the organic idea...no weird chemicals on your food and, if you're going heirloom as well, no MonSanto peeking over your shoulder looking at you. I kind of always figured that when you had an organic garden, you would be able to eat the produce without evening washing it. A naive idea, I can tell you. Well, okay, you could forgo the washing of the vegetables but you may have second thoughts after remembering what you put on those plants instead of chemicals....think scary names like Bloodmeal, Fish emulsion, powdered bacteria, fertilizer-made-from-sewage. NASTY!!! :P And then there are the creatures that inhabit the plants. Anyone out there ever see the tomato hornworm? If you haven't, here's a picture:

Four inches of disgusting, meaty, caterpillar. Benjamin's job as an Organic Gardener? Pull those unwilling beasties off the plants, double them over, and squish them! :P *shiver* Because in an Organic garden, there are precious few sprays and things you can eradicate the pests with. This summer several people were kept employed pulling potato bugs, squash-bugs, and hornworms off of the plants and drowning them in soapy water. I have learned from experience that a drowned grasshopper turns Pepto-bismal pink, and looks like a little colonial gentleman in breeches. And that fish-emulsion stuff I was talking about? It's really all the stuff from inside a fish. And it gets all over you. Witness the conversation I had with Gracie yesterday while I made dinner: Me: "I need a shower! I smell like fish-guts!"

Gracie: "Let me `mell you? (smells my arm) Nope! You smell like Rachie!"

Me: "Smell my skirt!"

Gracie: "Yup! You `mell like fish-guts!" :D

So I'm not lying! Organic gardening has a dark side. But I'm sure the positive things outweigh the bad. We're not all going to keel over covered in strange lumps later in life from chemicals, we are growing our own food, and it gives us something to blog about! -Rachel

Our Latest Enemies

Living in Virginia Beach there were city-type trials. Things were easily stolen if you left them out. There were some creepy people round-about. Living in Ocean view we had inner-city type trials- things were routinely stolen from someplace or another. Pretty much one out of every 2 people you met were creepy. We saw drug deals and other sad things like that. Potential danger was....everywhere. But now living out in the country.....we have new problems. Real enemies. There is an army encamped on our land, and they are out to get us. No, they arent people, and the only way to battle them is to squish them. They are the Bugs! These creeps are everywhere! We spend hours in the garden picking them off plants. Then when we come inside, there are flies everywhere. I seldom come in from gardening without later finding a tick on me. The beetles and moths congregate on our porch, waiting for a chance to come inside. Maybe it is because of the porch-lights, but I feel they have personal designs upon our sanity! :) I am not a "girl" about snakes or lizards or frogs. I like picking them up. But when it comes to disgusting little bugs that you don't notice until they are ON you, I draw the line. Bugs I recognize are not so bad, unless they happen to be clingy Japanese beetles, or potato-bug larvae, or daddy-long-legs. But we have weird bugs out here. There is one that looked like a shrimp. Another one looks like it has an elephant trunk. We have 4-inch long wasps, and multiple kinds of ticks. Not to mention stinkbugs and gigantic tomato horn-worms. *shivers*
Not all the bugs are gross though- we have some of the reddest ladybugs I've ever seen, plenty of butterflies, (who lay the catipillars we have to squish!) these beautiful golden beetles, and fireflies that make Matthew and I laugh because they look like they are either shorting out, or hyperventilating! :) I am not sure why I departed on this strange little bug discussion, but it might be because I feel something crawling on my shoulder right now that I've been trying to ignore. These creatures have no concept of the fact that a house is made to keep them out!
-Rachel