cape cod organic gardeners

As an organic gardener and Editor of the Cape Cod Organic Gardeners Newsletter, I would like to offer an alternative to Bob Gelsthorpe’s “Gardening Without Guilt” April 22nd column.

Gelsthorpe does a disservice to Cape Cod with his embrace of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. He mocks Cape Coders who would be stewards of the Earth in favor of encouraging all of us to be stewards of our personal short term self interest. And let the ground water be damned. To reinforce his thesis, he disparages organic gardeners as as a guilt ridden lot, ” who end up feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis”.

His bottom line? Composting is dismissed is a shell game. Organic gardening is hard work. It’s easier to pour fast acting chemicals and poisons on our food than it is to build up the soil with compost and slow acting fertilizers thus producing healthy plants that are disease and pest resistant.

He mistakenly cites guilt as the organic gardener’s driving force and states that deep down most of us eat vegetables because they are good for us. Hello? Most of us eat what we choose for a variety of reasons. It tastes good. We enjoy it. We like to try new foods. We are simply hungry. And yes, sometimes it’s good for us. As a point of reference, most organic gardeners are not vegetarian or vegan and all that I know enjoy eating.

Gelsthorpe’s claim that organic gardeners dismiss 200 years of chemical gardening technology is simply not true. We use dozens of commercially developed products to fertilize, enrich soil, battle pests and lengthen the growing season. These products are available locally as well as online. Local merchants like Hyannis Country Garden have large sections of organic products and even an organic gardener discount club. They have many staff who have been to NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) training. Many gardeners while not exclusively organic, are in tune with the principles and follow them as best they can, not dogmatically, just practically.

The bottom line for an organic gardener has little to do with guilt or even with chemicals and everything to do with good garden/soil/plant management. We have only one Earth. It is laboring under the stresses caused by us humans. It’s not because we are bad people and not because we are stupid. And we don’t have to feel guilty. It’s simply that we have reached a point in time in the progression of civilization where the collective activities of 6.7 billion people are wreaking havoc. Large factory farms, with their massive applications of fertilizer and pesticides and their water intensive irrigation (80% of which evaporates in the air), are hammering the water table, polluting water ways and depleting topsoil across America. It’s a big problem.The abrupt end of such practices with no transition to healthier growing systems would result it world wide famine.

Scientists understand a lot more now about how ecosystems interrelate, than when these mass food production systems were evolving in the last century.  Today, we can do the analysis, make conclusions and act appropriately. And it’s easier to take individual action than it is to reorganize worldwide food production.

The Cape has no factory farms, but it has its own 21st century pollution issues. Nitrogen loading is one of the primary contaminants of Cape Cod’s sole source aquifer. Our water supply and estuaries on Cape Cod are under stress. Quick release fertilizers are part of the problem. One way to relieve the nitrogen loading stress is to use organic fertilizers, so we do what we can to mitigate the problem. It’s not particularly dogmatic. It’s just common sense.

Additionally, many organic gardeners that I know pursue these alternatives because we want to help our children and grandchildren to understand and learn how to take care of themselves and the earth. Gelsthorpe suggests by default that we teach our children to ignore the reality of how we interact with the environment, to do whatever is easier and to mock those who are trying to live with less impact on our ecosystems.

“Leave the eco-guilt on the shelf.” he admonishes as he urges us to favor balance rather than dogma. But then he offers no balance.

So let me offer a nice helping of balance. Simply switch from fast acting highly soluble fertilizers to slow acting organic fertilizers. You will still get good results.  Lay off the poisons with little skull and cross bones on them, there are a bunch of alternatives.  No dogma, no guilt. Just common sense. And it seems harder.

It seems harder to insulate a home than to turn up the thermostat but turning up the thermostat is harder on the planet.

It seems harder to drive slower than to speed, but speeding is harder on the planet.

It seems harder to compost your kitchen scraps than to toss them in the trash, but tossing them is harder on the planet.

These are all little things. We don’t have to do them dogmatically, but when we keep them in mind, as a community, they add up. And when we pass them along to future generations we raise the chances that they will continue the process.

Here on the Cape, year after year we watch the big chemical trucks injecting their poisons into the water table on behalf of the easy way to have a green lawn, but there are alternative organic lawn care companies. Where I live in Centerville, the chemical trucks back right up to within in ten feet of Lake Wequaquett and hose the earth with blends of pesticides and highly soluble nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. It’s the high tech version of Gelsthrope’s “Just follow the directions on the package and your worries will be fewer and your productivity greater.”

Earth to Gelsthorpe. It’s not 1950 any more. Science is showing us ways to tread more lightly on the dirt under our feet. And it’s not as hard as it seems.

Readers interested in organic gardening can join the nonprofit Cape Cod Organic Gardeners by contacting me at polotka@gmail.com.
Dues are $5 a year.