"Bill Robinson" wrote : > > Personally, I prevent and control pests, disease, and weeds > strictly by cultural practices; i.e., simply old fashioned > gardening and that is the way it was done "a long time ago." > This is another way to define organic gardening. > > For example, I minimize powdery mildew on roses by simply > taking it easy on the fertilizer. . . I use modest portions > of fish meal as my primary fertilizer because it is slow- > release and because it feeds the soil microorganisms. Powdery > mildew targets an abundance of young, tender growth . . . > this kind of cultural practice prevents powdery mildew, in > my opinion, better than any of the commercial fungicides or > the use of the baking soda.
Not to be picky, but your example makes my point. The method you call
"Old Fashioned" cannot have existed before commercial fertilizers since it
seeks to mediate a -symptom- of that fertilizer. Secondly, AFAIK, fish was
not widely used for fertilizer in European culture, as evidenced by the fact
that the Pre-American Tribespeople -taught- it to the settlers. Even so, it
was not in wide spread use for real farms. There was little need for it for
anything other than corn, and even corn grew well in the denuded forest
floor.
Perhaps slowed growth prevented mildew by accident, slow growth happens
in poor soil without fertilizer, but I have searched long and hard to find
methods like yours documented as being in practice more than 100 years ago.
Mostly they just grew what didn't die. Even crop rotation, perhaps the first
of scientific "Organic" agricultural methods, is only 200 years or so old.
"Old Fashioned" methods -were- organic by default, if you define
"organic" as not using industrially produced chemicals in the field. But
considering the general ignorance of several factors - nutrients, insect
life cycles, the nature of fungus and mildews, soil life and biomechanics,
they could not have been that particular complex of hyper-technical
adjustments that we call "The Organic Method" today.
There is some credit to the idea that flower gardening was done with
more "Organic" expertise in the past, but commercial food farming in the
past counted on the health of the native soil and, in America, it was abused
until that soil died. Without deforestation, manuring of fields and
fallowing, agriculture could only exist in those places where the Nile
flooded the fields regularly.
Also, lest I be accused of not knowing about them, things such as "the
three sisters" and the afore mentioned fish under the corn, and even
manuring, were among accidental discoveries, happily abandoned by those
using them as soon as something easier came along... which is my real point.
Ancient farmers -wished- they could have avoided Organic Farming but they
had no choice. Ignorance of biology meant that they just had to do the best
they could, seeking new fields under old forests when nothing else worked.