Organic Gardening- The Dark Side

We try to keep an Organic garden. I love the organic idea...no weird chemicals on your food and, if you're going heirloom as well, no MonSanto peeking over your shoulder looking at you. I kind of always figured that when you had an organic garden, you would be able to eat the produce without evening washing it. A naive idea, I can tell you. Well, okay, you could forgo the washing of the vegetables but you may have second thoughts after remembering what you put on those plants instead of chemicals....think scary names like Bloodmeal, Fish emulsion, powdered bacteria, fertilizer-made-from-sewage. NASTY!!! :P And then there are the creatures that inhabit the plants. Anyone out there ever see the tomato hornworm? If you haven't, here's a picture:

Four inches of disgusting, meaty, caterpillar. Benjamin's job as an Organic Gardener? Pull those unwilling beasties off the plants, double them over, and squish them! :P *shiver* Because in an Organic garden, there are precious few sprays and things you can eradicate the pests with. This summer several people were kept employed pulling potato bugs, squash-bugs, and hornworms off of the plants and drowning them in soapy water. I have learned from experience that a drowned grasshopper turns Pepto-bismal pink, and looks like a little colonial gentleman in breeches. And that fish-emulsion stuff I was talking about? It's really all the stuff from inside a fish. And it gets all over you. Witness the conversation I had with Gracie yesterday while I made dinner: Me: "I need a shower! I smell like fish-guts!"

Gracie: "Let me `mell you? (smells my arm) Nope! You smell like Rachie!"

Me: "Smell my skirt!"

Gracie: "Yup! You `mell like fish-guts!" :D

So I'm not lying! Organic gardening has a dark side. But I'm sure the positive things outweigh the bad. We're not all going to keel over covered in strange lumps later in life from chemicals, we are growing our own food, and it gives us something to blog about! -Rachel