Every Gardner’s Conundrum
William Alexander, the author of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden, wrote an op-ed that although they spring from a tree that he's nurtured from a sapling and has protected them from deer, squirrels, insects and fungi, and fed them a healthy diet of compost and manure, he feels guilty about eating these apples, because they are not organic. Alexander says he labored mightily for several years to cultivate, first, organic apples; then minimally sprayed apples (spraying only in response to a pest invasion); and finally in desperation for home-grown fruit, resorted to prophylactic application of a chemical wide-spectrum orchard spray.
Alexander says that an organic garden (or farm) does not come cheaply. On the human side, when bugs appear in his organic vegetable garden, he first uses the most organic of treatments - his fingers. When that proves insufficient (and it almost always does), he escalates to a pesticide containing pyrethrins and rotenone, substances made from the roots and stems of several tropical flowers, and favored by backyard gardeners and organic farmers. It is most effective, however, when directly sprayed on the bugs, as it has little if any residual effect. So it requires frequent spraying while the bugs are active (this is usually while he’s at the office, as the bugs follow the same schedule). Still, it is organic, so you get to feel virtuous in the garden. Until, that is, you learn that rotenone has been implicated in Parkinson's disease and pyrethrins have been given a probable cancer-causing ranking. Nature, it seems, is really good at making toxins (just ask Socrates).
Alexander asks, is it possible that the manufactured chemical malathion - at least in the small quantities used in his garden - is as safe to use as the organic chemical rotenone? Plants have to literally be drenched (particularly if harboring hard-shelled beetles) daily in rotenone, while malathion can be used sparingly, and needs to be applied only occasionally. Both break down in the environment fairly quickly. (New York Times, 5/27/06).
