Pests and weeds

Just picked up the new Pest and Weed Expert by Hessayon just to pop in a corner as ONE of the reference books. There's a rather well repeated sentence - "Fungicides formerly recommended for the control of this disease are no longer approved for this use."

There's a lot of comment on prevention rather than cure. In fact it feels rather like how I learned as a young one - if you do these things, that is less likely to happen. If it does happen, take away and destroy the diseased item to stop it spreading.

Hey ho - it feels rather like full circle.

I've always thought of Hessayon as a disciple of the church of “better living through Chemistry.” 

I've often found that it's difficult to prevent everything and sometimes it's nice to cure a problem first so that you know future endeavours are working as prevention.    Does that sound daft?

Ah so that’s Bindweed.  I’ve got Bindweed so I’ve got to do such and such so it doesn’t come back.  Then you know that your future prevention is working.  Right?

Hessayon is always my goto book on fruit, veg, weeds & pests & greenhouses but I am finding him limited in cure options too. 

I'm reading "Here's what you should have done" because all of his other options have been removed  by chemical legislation, there is very little  of "here's what you need to do" once you have a problem. 

as a complete beginner im going with the attitude if anything survives in the first two years then im happy and if not, why not? then i know for next time as its all a learning curve int it

I've always thought of Hessayon as a disciple of the church of “better living through Chemistry.” 

I'm a non organic gardener and don't think that is the case.  He presents an alternative way to tackle problems which you can take or leave.  In latter years, the EU has banned anything remotely useful and taken away our freedom of choice. 

I use chemicals judiciously and have no qualms eating what I grow.

Oh, how I long for the days when I could use Malathion to kill everything.

And club root liquid 

Yes, well that made someone feel a little faint after necking 20 steins of lager so it must be toxic. 

Quote from: Aunt Sally on October 07, 2009, 21:24

And club root liquid 

Yes, well that made someone feel a little faint after necking 20 steins of lager so it must be toxic. 

    It wasn't the larger then 

As I said earlier in this post gone are the days when you could blitz away all your pest and disease problems with a selection of chemicals without a care in the world (still got an empty container of "Gamma BHC" in my shed as a reminder of the good/bad old days!).

Truly organic veg growing is so problematic that I think many would wonder whether it's worth the effort; like a lot of people these days I just try to do my best when it comes to "saving the planet", but I have to say that the day they ban slug pellets I will be putting my garden tools up for sale on Ebay!