Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Our next guest is Jeff Gillman, author of "The Truth About Organic
Gardening".  Jeff was raised in Southeastern Pennsylvania and attended
Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.  After college he
headed South to the University of Georgia where he earned a masters
degree in entomology and a Ph.D. in horticulture.  Jeff is currently an
Associate Professor in the Department of Horticultural Science at the
University of Minnesota where he teaches courses on nursery management,
plant propagation, and pesticides and researches a wide variety of
plant health issues.  He is also the author of the books "The Truth
about Garden Remedies" and "The Truth about Organic Gardening".

Leading our conversation is WELL member Angie Coiro.  In seventh
grade, Angie was chosen to read the morning announcements at Coquillard
Middle School in South Bend, Indiana. She has been unable to shut up
ever since. After 15 years in public radio, she made the break to Air
America, hosting Mother Jones Radio. She's received
multiple awards for her work, most prestigiously the 2003 Public Radio
News Directors award for the best public radio interview in the
country that year. (Her guest: Salman Rushdie.) Most recently, Angie is
the host of "The Angie Coiro Show" (formerly, "The Green Show with
ANgie Coiro") on KKGN in San Francisco.   She lives in the Bay Area
with an everchanging cast of cats.

Welcome Jeff and Angie!
  

    
Thank you for having me!  I'm looking forward to some interesting
discussion on organic gardening, organic food, organic methods, and the
organic movement in general.
  

    
Jeff, welcome to the Well! I was so tickled that your book was picked
up for an interview here.

Jeff and I have crossed paths once before; he was my guest on Green960
on May 18 of this year. You can find the podcast on this page, if
you'd like to give it a listen. It should be a nice companion piece to
this interview:

<http://green960.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=greenshow.xm
l>

or

<http://tinyurl.com/4mw62u>
  

    
Jeff, there's a wealth of information out there on organic gardening -
books, magazines, newspaper columns, and of course the internet. What
gap in that sea did you set out to fill?

And are you, first and foremost, an organic gardener?
  

    
And while I'm at it - what do you find to be the most reliable sources
of organic gardening information? Over and above the book we're about
to discuss, of course.
  

    
Hi Angie,

When I wrote this book I set out to give honest answers about how
effective and safe various organic gardening techniques are.  Right now
there aren't many sources for information about which organic
techniques work and how safe they are outside of the scientific
literature.  What I usually see is someone touting their product as
organic and then we, the public, are supposed to assume that just
because this product is organic it is necessarily safe and effective,
which is a mistaken assumption.

Now the BIG question, am I an organic gardener, well, first you need
to define what you mean by an organic gardener -- there is no official
definition.  If you're asking whether I avoid synthetic chemicals the
answer is no.  I run a nursery at the University of Minnesota where I
use both organic and synthetic techniques depending on which is most
appropriate for the situation in terms of efficacy and safety.  At home
I follow the same rule, I use the safest most effective product that I
can regardless of whether it comes from a plant or a test-tube.  I'm
happy to say that often "natural" products work great -- but I haven't
found anything equal to Round-Up yet for getting rid of tough brush. 
And I've found few pesticides that I find scarier than Rotenone (from
the root of a South American plant).  But I should also mention that my
preferred techniques for dealing with pests include leaving them be,
squishing them with my fingers or pulling them out of the ground by
hand (for weeds). 

But the idea around which organic gardening revolves is healthy soil. 
Renewing the soil with compost, old plant material and manure is
central to any organic garden.  In fact, our organic movement today
comes from studies in the 1800s and 1900s which show that renewing the
soil with these materials is the best way to keep plants healthy.  I
most assuredly do all that I can to keep healthy soil high in organic
material in both my nursery and around my home. 

Most reliable sources for information about organic
gardening...hmmm...I think that the best book out there about organic
gardening, even though it doesn't have the word organic in it, is Lee
Reich's book Weedless gardening.  It's basically about how to keep your
soil healthy.  It's a great resource.  For pest control I don't trust
many texts.  Simply put, they tend to be much too enthusiastic about
organic techniques without properly acknowledging their drawbacks. 
  

    

> What I usually see is someone touting their product as
> organic and then we, the public, are supposed to assume that just
> because this product is organic it is necessarily safe and effective,
> which is a mistaken assumption.

I wondered about that. The problem is how can a consumer know what to buy?
  

    
And while Jeff ponders that ...

Re "what's an organic gardener": I wonder if most people aren't in
fact closer to your practices than we might assume. Sure, every
movement has purists - and they're probably the most evangelistic, the
most inclined to publish and share their points of view.  I'd lay money
the most of us though will stick to Earth-kind practices as much as
possible, then - regretfully, perhaps - reach for the Malathion or the
Round-Up when all else fails.

Hey, let's talk about Round-Up.  You wanna talk about pissing off the
purists! - I got an earful from a listener after our show together.
Your stance on that, and the reactions to it, are emblematic of the
nerves you touch with parts of your book. 

So tell us about your opinion of Round-up, how it's reflected in your
book, and the reactions you've gotten to that.

Also: which other reviews of products or procedures have provoked
similar outcry?

What are some of the best conversations you've been privy to involving
your book and its more controversial elements.
  

    
i know many folks are surprised by what is allowed under
'usda organic'...and i know many farmers selling at
farmers' markets dont use the term 'organic', but dont
use pesticides or herbicides.

so, it's tricky...
  

    
I have SO been looking forward to this discussion. Thanks for joining
us, Jeff! I will be paying rapt attention on the sidelines until the
spirit moves me to pipe up...
  

    
Hi, Jeff!

First, I want to say that you've written a nice book, packed with
information and anaysis.

I might have followed the same career as you (was going for a dual major in
horticulture and chemistry, with the idea of working for Monsanto or DuPont
some day, but the shiny glittery career of design sidetracked me - long
story).

Most of the time as I was reading your book, I was saying to myself:  yes,
yes, I remember that, and so on.

Some of the pesticides and methods hadn't been invented when I was in
college, so it was a good update for me.

One thing that I was expecting to see any page now was the LD-50 of various
pesticides, as compared to each other and common household chemicals.
Instead, you mention the EIQ.  Is that the new thing?

LD-50 was pretty crude, but the best measure available at the time.
  

    
To our off-WELL readers, if  you would like to join the conversation, please
send your comments to <inkwell@well.com>.
  

    
Hi Jeff. Really liked the book. I learned a lot.  In discussing your book
with my husband and a friend, it seems as though you are analgous to the
vegetarian vs vegan in organic vs uber-organic.  There is a tremendous
amount of very useful information based on real science and real world
results.  How did you go about finding the data?
  

    
Jeff, Alan hosted the <garden.> conference on the Well forever, and
quite beautifully. Now that he's retired, <cjp> and I are doing our
best to hold up the standard. You might want to visit us over there!

Some great questions piling in. I suspect my job here is gonna be
pretty darned easy ...
  

    
Wow, so many questions and comments! -- I'll try to take them in
order.

First, how can the consumer know what to buy -- if you mean fruit and
veggies, its actually simple.  If you're trying to avoid pesticides
(both organic and synthetic) then you should do a google search for
fruits and veggies that are likely to have the highest and lowest
amounts of synthetic pesticides.  Onions are often on the list and a
few others.  Fruits and veggies that have the highest amounts of
synthetic pesticide applied to them will usually also have the highest
amounts of organic pesticides applied, so these are the ones to avoid. 
If you're just afraid of synthetics then you can eat all of the
organic apples and peaches you want (two fruits that usually have lots
of pesticides applied) -- they'll have lower amounts of synthetic
pesticides, but they'll probably be loaded with organics.

Second, Round-Up.  Hey if anyone gives you an earful send them to me,
I've spend the last ten years looking for proof that it's necessarily
bad -- proof that just doesn't seem to exist as far as I can tell
despite lots of people trying.  Most extremists look to a few studies
that have shown that Round-Up MAY have detrimental effects and use
these to PROVE that they do.  I spend a little bit of space discussing
this in the book.  It really doesn't make much sense.  I don't think
that Round-Up is the be all end all of pesticides.  It isn't perfect,
and it can be detrimental to the environment if it's misused in some
easily conceivable ways BUT it's pretty darn safe for a pesticide and
light years better than many organic pesticides in terms of both
environmental impact and human health.  Sure, pulling weeds by hand is
better, but if you're careful there just isn't much evidence that
Round-Up is that bad for the environment.    

One caveat to the above paragraph, the active ingredient in Round-Up,
glyphosate, can be mixed with other stuff that is much more damaging to
the environment than the glyphosate itself -- and this can also be
called Round-Up.  So it gets pretty tricky -- if you're buying a
pesticide from the garden center shelf you should always check the
active ingredients in that pesticide.  That's where my book comes in --
it enables you to do that and have some clue what the active
ingredients in a pesticide are and what they do.

Farmers markets are great -- they'll usually be very honest with you
about what they applied -- I like the farmers who apply a little
pesticide only when they have to -- and whose fruit is just a little
spotty -- they're the ones I trust.  The guys who tell me they never
spray anything and then show me spotless apples....I grew up on an
apple orchard, it's tough to get spotless apples without poison...

LD-50 is still used -- I chose to go with EIQ ratings -- which are not
commonly available -- because I felt they did a good job of describing
the total danger of the poison.  Though LD-50 values are still the
standard they have a lot of weaknesses, not the least of which is that
they're performed on animals like rats, mice and rabbits making the
exactness of the value for humans highly questionable.  Shoot, if a
chemical is extremely poisonous I figured that I could just say "hey
this stuff is hot as Hades" which I do a couple of times in the book
(such as with nicotine).

To find data for the book I mostly looked through scientific
literature, both old and new.  There's plenty of it out there, but most
people don't have the means to use it.  I see my role as taking this
literature and making it accessible.  Plenty of other people at
Universities do exactly what I did (they're called extension
specialists), but I managed to luck out by convincing a publisher to
print what I wrote in a book and market it.  Most academics don't do a
good job of marketing themselves or the information that they want to
present -- I'm pretty bad at it myself -- publishers tend to be good at
it -- after all, it's how they make money.

I think that covers what I've seen so far, but I'm hoping that ya'll
have more for tomorrow!

Cheers,

Jeff
  

    
wrt farmers' markets --- i was really struck by the distinction you
make at a farmer's market i just went to in southern calif.
most of the stuff was NOT labeled organic, but a lot was
'grown without spray'. the produce wasnt perfect-looking ---
but  not an issue. BUT there was a stand there selling
'usda organic' where the fruit had the stickers on it you
see in grocery stores. i talked with the seller and he said
that 90 percent of what they grow they sell to whole foods ---
and what doesnt make it cosmetically they sell at the farmers'
markets. still, their stuff was more uniform and featureless
than the rest of the produce i was for sale there.

and of course didnt taste any better.
  

    
For thouse who don't know the term, LD-50 is the dose at which 50% of the
test animals die with a single exposure.

So another reason that it's not very helpful (besides that it's measured on
rats and not humans) is that the LD-50 of ethyl alcohol tells you not to
drink a quart of tequila at once, but it doesn't tell you anything about
fetal alcohol syndrome or cirrhosis of the liver after repeated exposure at
much lower levels.

The EIQ ratings are very intersting and quite useful.  New to me!
  

    
thanks for the clarification.
  

    
Jeff, let's talk about compost tea. I paged ahead to that early on, as
I'd heard about it a lot but had never tried it. I was surprised to
see it examined as a disease fighter - with sugar in it, no less. I'd
always heard of it as a nutrient - soak your compost, use the water on
your plants. 

Which leads me to think that for every bit of garden wisdom (or myth),
there are multiple versions. 

How did you decide what to look into? What didn't make the cut?

And what conclusions surprised you personally?
  

    
I hear more from people who believe in compost tea and think I'm crazy
for saying it doesn't work than from any other group.  I placed
compost tea in the disease fighting section because that's where I felt
there was the most (mis)information, but I could have easily placed it
in the section where I discussed fertilizers.  

For those of you who don't know, compost tea is basically a tea where
compost is steeped in water (not hot water), usually with a little
sugar added.  This causes bacteria and perhaps fungi to grow which are
theoretically good for the garden.  The problem is that it has never
been proven to be good for the garden (despite testing) and it could
grow diseases like salmonella and E. coli -- which would obviously be
pretty bad.  

Deciding what made the cut and what didn't was pretty difficult.  At
this point I wish that I'd included compost tea in two sections rather
than just one, I wish that I'd spent some time on till vs. no-till
gardening, and I also wish I'd spent more time on the organic food
section.  The cut off was a matter of time -- I like to meet deadlines
-- as well as a matter of minutiae -- what practices are and aren't
likely to be considered by the typical organic gardener.

I have a question for people viewing this site.  Something that I've
been wanting to ask a large group of people not necessarily invested in
gardening for a long time:

Do you think organic fruits and vegetables from the store are safer
and/or healthier than non-organically produced ones?  Why?  
  

    
I just attempted several answers at that and dumped them. Obviously
needing a.) more pondering and b.) more coffee, I'll give it some time.


While others post their answers, Jeff, here's another for you: earlier
you talked a bit about your own gardening techniques. Can you tell us
about your garden? What's in it? Is it a family project or your own
private "workshop"? How has it changed over the years, and how have you
evolved as a gardener?
  

    
Just checking in to say how much I'm enjoying the book. I think I sold
my doctor a copy this morning, as I had it with me and we got into
quite a conversation about our mutual heirloom tomato addictions. He
was thrilled to see a book about organic gardening with some actual
science in it! 

Anyway: I'm going to hold my question till the appropriate time, and
answer Jeff's latest one. I think that organically grown fruits and
vegetables are healthier *for me* because I have known pesticide
allergies. I suspect, knowing the little that I do about substances
applied to commercially grown produce, that they are also a healthier
choice for my child, who is also beset by allergies.  I'm aware,
though, that even organic fertilizers, disease preventatives and
pesticides have risks attached- for example, I got a faceful of
pyrethrins accidentally, years ago, and I date my asthma to that event.

I've read so much conflicting information that some days I feel like,
well, there's nothing to lose by eating "organic" produce, and possibly
a good bit to gain. 

I have read quite a bit about organic or healthier choices in meat and
dairy, and am converted on those choices, for both me and my daughter.
  

    
ps. I am a religious user of manure tea, as I was taught by my
grandfather-of-the-amazing-gardens, but I get my manure from a source
where I know exactly what's going into the horses, and therefore have a
good idea what's coming out. 
  

    
"Tea" is not just a way of applying the fertilizer, but something like
fermention for plant nutrients?  IF so that's pretty wild.    

In terms of buying organic, as a data-point, I do it for strawberries 
since I know they often get heavy-duty treatment.  

I buy other organic foods (if they look good to me and the price is 
ok) to protect chemical workers, farmworkers and soil from long term 
exposure to toxic petrochemicals of various kinds, not so much for 
health and safety personally.  Same with not eating poultry or cattle
for that matter.  For me it's a land, waste and resources choice since 
studying those issues years ago.  I think quite a few people make some 
choices of organics on a vague "for the better good" sense that is 
a version of this overall resource footprint philosophy.
  

    
The question of whether to buy organic produce or not reminds me of the
story reported in my local paper in the 1980s where a woman got out of her
car at the supermarket, put out her cigarette, and stormed in to demand
Alar-free apples.

As a gardener, I'm a bit skittish of most chemical pesticides, mainly
because I did some trials of various things when I was in AG school in the
late 70s and wound up with a case of chloracne that lasted well into the
80s.  So, no phenoxyl's for me, thank you very much.  No Chemlawn truck
here, either.  Just this year I tried corn glutein meal for the lawn (the
little bit that I haven't eliminated already, but in this neighborhood you
have to have some lawn), but of course I won't know the result until the
year after next.  I'll use Roundup on poison ivy, but if it's just some
common weeds on my brick patio, well, that's a fine place for me to dump
the hot boiling water from canning project, since I have to dump it
someplace anyway.  I've never seen parboiled plantain weed recover.

At the grocery store, I'm not terribly worried about pesticide residues for
myself, but like <gail>, I think it's worthwhile to support growers that
don't require their employees to use petrochemical derivitaves, often
without proper instruction or protective gear.  I find that the tomatoes
from the Amish growers we have in my area are tastier than anything from
the supermarket, but I bet it has more to do with their being local and not
preharvested and the shorter delivery time than anything about them not
buying stuff from Dow or Monsanto.
  

    
I go to a local produce market run by local growers (they do ship in things
we don't grow locally or seasonally).  I don't know what kinds of chemicals
or not they do or don't use. I don't care. I wash everything well, and I
take my chances.  The members of my family are blessed with iron stomachs
and no food allergies, so we run with whatever is there.  I do not buy
produce at the supermarket, and although the produce at Whole Foods is
absolutely beautiful, I prefer the local, ugly and cheap.