Pesticides used in organic farming?

[effort]

i enjoyed your post anna, thanks, but in commecial level using pesticide is non avoidable, organic farming and plant health improvemnt method helps lot but in some point farmer needs to rescue his/her harvest, i think.

[PeterB]

Slugs and snails are notoriously difficult Anna..wood ashes scattered between the lines of plants deters them without killing them. Sharp Builders Sand will deter snails but not the little grey slugs that live under the soil surface. I have not tried it yet but it is possible to buy copper wire which deters the slugs and snails by giving them a tiny galvanic shock which does not harm them but they will not cross it..apparantly..

[Annapurna]

Hi, effort,

but organic agriculture already is on a commercial level [here], -it is a huge branch, actually, with more demand than supply, so we need to import from the rest of the World.

Conventional farming or agriculture is a sad field, needing to resort to clubs, when smaller tools would work better, at least in the preventive field.

Anybody can open an can of poison and kill, but it takes intelligence to wonder about WHY something got out of balance, and how to counter it wisely.

Of course I live in a region where grass hopper invasions that ruin everything are unknown...

We do get a poisonous caterpillar though....through global warming, they say, and they come in via the Alps from Italy.

They get sprayed.

I think there is no natural antagonist, -I will have to google that.

There is of course a difference between organic and Buddhist agriculture.

Organic farmers will defend crops and kill insects, if necessary, but with different substances and with 'beings'.

[Annapurna]

Slugs and snails are notoriously difficult Anna..wood ashes scattered between the lines of plants deters them without killing them. Sharp Builders Sand will deter snails but not the little grey slugs that live under the soil surface. I have not tried it yet but it is possible to buy copper wire which deters the slugs and snails by giving them a tiny galvanic shock which does not harm them but they will not cross it..apparantly..

Thanks, Peter, I have wood ashes and will try that today, before it begins to rain again.

I think I'll try copper wire as well.

[chownah]

Peter, what do you do against snails and slugs?

I used to use a killer but now I am blocked. I hate touching them, if they don't have a little house to live in, but pull myself together and collect them, only-I never catch them all like the killers.

What to do?

When you say "I am blocked" does this mean that you are not allowed to use the killer because it is not organic and you are perhaps looking for a better way to kill slugs?....if so....here is a technique which I used when living in a land famous for its proliferation of slugs. First I discovered that slugs love marigolds so I planted a border of miniature marigolds completely around the garden (looked great!!!)....this was to attract any slugs entering the garden from outside....then I put alot of old boards flat on the ground where ever it seemed good (often on the edge of a pathway...then I got a quart jar and put a couple of tablespoons of salt and about a half cup of water in the jar....then early in the morning before the dew dried up and the slugs were still active I used chopsticks to pick the slugs and then place them in the salt water where they would dissolve.....later in the day when it was warmer and dryer I would turn the boards over and again using chopsticks I would harvest the slugs which were hiding on the damp cool underside of the boards....then in the evening at twilight I would patrol and get the slugs came out early as the dampness descended. After about a week or two I had more or less eliminated slugs from the interior of the garden so mostly all I had to do was patrol the marigold border to catch the newcomers who invariably would stop to eat the marigolds...I would still patrol the interior but to my delight I discovered that I had a virtually slug free garden which at that place and time everyone was saying was impossible to achieve without chemical poisons......of course this is KILLING them and in a most uncomfortable way I'm sure (dissolved in brine!!!) but I think that if you check out the anatomy of a slug and see how many sensory nerves they have and what amount of brain power they have to process it you will see that slugs are only marginally sentient...maybe...

Also...to deter (and NOT KILL) green worms on brocolli and other cabbage family crops you can use a floating row cover which is a light weight nylon mesh (used to be used for making cheap formal dresses....maybe still is...) draped over the row of plants....it is light enough that the plant can support it without any stakes or poles....be sure that it reaches to the ground all around.....this will keep the moths (which lay the eggs which hatch into green worms) from laying their eggs on the underside of the edge of a leaf....if the moths can not grip leaf edge and carefully place a cluster of eggs on the underside then they will go look somewhere else....I developed this technique years ago when I lived in a place where it was claimed that you could not grow worm free brocolli without chemicals...wrong again.....now it is a standard practice....I guess I should have patented it.....but didn't.....

chownah

[Annapurna]

When you say "I am blocked" does this mean that you are not allowed to use the killer because it is not organic and you are perhaps looking for a better way to kill slugs?....

No, Chownah, I don't want to kill them anymore at all, because of the first precept.

Trapping them though like you did, only minus killing them, just collecting them in a bucket and driving them off into the sunset...oops, forest, would be a good idea...hm.

Let me think about it. Can't you come over and do it for me?

[Rui Sousa]

You're right Peter, deaths can't be avoided, we would have to give up driving [fast] too, if we look at how many insects die in collisions.

I think what matters in terms of breaking the first precept or not is:

Intention.

The first precept is only broken if we kill with intention, right?

If we step on an ant without even noticing, we had no intention to kill. Precept not broken, or?



Anna

There is a Sutta about a blind monk that stepped on bugs, and some of monks went to the Buddha and mentioned this. As i recall it the Buddha explained the monks that his killing was not intentional and there was no kamma in such actions from him.

There is another sutta in which a wanderer could not drink water because he couldn't help thinking about the invisible beings he was about to kill be drinking, the Buddha advised him not to be to zealous about that.

When try very hard to keep my percepts and keep going with my live, for example by gardening with no chemicals and by making my own fertilizer from vegetable left overs. But I know that these actions will result in killing animals, it is not my intention, but I know it happens so I try to avoid it whenever possible.

P.S. Couldn't find the suttas on Access to Insight, sorry.

[PeterB]

Its one of the main differences between Buddhadhamma and Jainadharma as I am sure you know Rui Sousa..the Jains teach that all action results in vipaka. Buddhadhamma that only intentional action does.

[Rui Sousa]

Slugs and snails are notoriously difficult Anna..wood ashes scattered between the lines of plants deters them without killing them. Sharp Builders Sand will deter snails but not the little grey slugs that live under the soil surface. I have not tried it yet but it is possible to buy copper wire which deters the slugs and snails by giving them a tiny galvanic shock which does not harm them but they will not cross it..apparantly..

That is a very useful tip. My broccoli leaves look like swiss chesse And my peach tree has more snails hanging in the branches than peaches.

It will be fun to make an ashwall to keep snails off my farm, instead of a firewall to keep hackers off my server farm.

[Rui Sousa]

Its one of the main differences between Buddhadhamma and Jainadharma as I am sure you know Rui Sousa..the Jains teach that all action results in vipaka. Buddhadhamma that only intentional action does.

Indeed

[PeterB]

Slugs and snails are notoriously difficult Anna..wood ashes scattered between the lines of plants deters them without killing them. Sharp Builders Sand will deter snails but not the little grey slugs that live under the soil surface. I have not tried it yet but it is possible to buy copper wire which deters the slugs and snails by giving them a tiny galvanic shock which does not harm them but they will not cross it..apparantly..

That is a very useful tip. My broccoli leaves look like swiss chesse And my peach tree has more snails hanging in the branches than peaches.

It will be fun to make an ashwall to keep snails off my farm, instead of a firewall to keep hackers off my server farm.

You can buy the copper wire online..as i say I havent tried it..but apparently its very effective. It has the effect on them of making them pull back and go elsewhere.

[chownah]

Probably the cheapest way to buy a large quantity of copper wire is to buy standard house wiring cable which is used pretty much everywhere in the world.....it consists of two copper wires each with their own plastic insulating layer (usually one is white and one is black) and sometimes a third copper wire with no insulation of its own and both (or all three) of them are contained in a single plastic sheath of usually white plastic insulation. Buying wire this way and then stripping off the insulation is almost guaranteed to be the cheapest way to get bare copper wire....the reason being that this stuff is made in such huge quantitites that it turns out to be cheaper.....of course it is best to do a cost comparison of whatever sources you might use. In the US this stuff is often called "twelve two with ground" or "romex".
chownah

Annapurna,
To collect the slugs you pick them up with chopsticks....you don't need to touch them at all....if you can't use chopsticks then stick with it and I'm sure you'll get it.....eventually.....hopefully.....you could use kitchen grabbers like the ones used to pick up hot corn on the cob....or muffins....
chownah

[PeterB]

I am not sure Chownah if the copper wire used is the ordinary one. I have seen the slug deterent wire advertised in gardening mags, I think it may be processed in some way to make it weather proof.

I wont be using it myself. Part of anicca for me is not having a garden at the moment. We lived in rural part of Devon in the west of England for many years, with a large garden, including fruit trees and so on. For work reasons we are now living in a beautiful apartment with views of the River Thames near London. We commuted between the two properties for a while but that wasnt a realistic option in the long term, so I have had to say goodbye to the garden sob sob...we now just have a balcony with pots and planters.

On the other hand we are close to the largest Theravada centre in the UK..

[chownah]

To test regular electric copper wire to see if deters slugs one could build a small enclosure maybe a square enclosure two feet on a side (60 cm on a side) using some electric copper wire and then place some slugs on the inside....see if they escape.
chownah

[Annapurna]

Probably the cheapest way to buy a large quantity of copper wire is to buy standard house wiring cable which is used pretty much everywhere in the world.....it consists of two copper wires each with their own plastic insulating layer (usually one is white and one is black) and sometimes a third copper wire with no insulation of its own and both (or all three) of them are contained in a single plastic sheath of usually white plastic insulation. Buying wire this way and then stripping off the insulation is almost guaranteed to be the cheapest way to get bare copper wire....the reason being that this stuff is made in such huge quantitites that it turns out to be cheaper.....of course it is best to do a cost comparison of whatever sources you might use. In the US this stuff is often called "twelve two with ground" or "romex".
chownah

Annapurna,
To collect the slugs you pick them up with chopsticks....you don't need to touch them at all....if you can't use chopsticks then stick with it and I'm sure you'll get it.....eventually.....hopefully.....you could use kitchen grabbers like the ones used to pick up hot corn on the cob....or muffins....
chownah

Good idea. I used leaves, but had to throw away each after picking up a slug, because the leaf would stick to it. I had some in my hand and it took me intensive brushing with a brush and soap to get the slime of my hand whilst I had the shivers with disgust.

That some of our brothers have to be such little slimers, think of it.

Could be us as well, if we mess up...time to get enlightened!

And then powder everything with ashes as well. . .

[Nibbida]

As an aside to this interesting discussion, a friend of mine told me of a natural remedy for mosquitoes. They apparently don't like wind that much since it's lots of work for them to fly through. So my friend had an outside gathering and put some fans around. It was a bit breezy, but no mosquitoes, no pesticides, no stinky repellent.