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seeds 02-03-09 Pepper Seedling Porn

:slams Iggy in the face with a cream pie:

how's that Iggy?
 
Like this?
pie-eating.jpg
 
AlabamaJack said:
I am trying to understand why you wouldn't give your plants vitamins or growth hormones to improve their growth habits if these items have been used over 60 years without any ill side effects.

Yes, I am asking for a discussion...
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* Struggling thread back on track *

Well, I guess it's just the feeling of getting to eat something that isn't flooded with all types of chemicals for once. If I have the choice of organic and non-organic grown food, I always choose the organic one. If it's not unreasonably more expensive.
 
Do you really think that your chiles will be full of (unnatural) chemicals if you use "unnatural" fertilizers? How would that happen?
 
Wikipedia... No comment.

Pesticides... Thought this was about nutrients?

Regarding the claimed difference in nutritional value - of course fruits etc that are allowed to grow slower and mature on the plant will have a higher nutritional value compared to fruit that are grown under optimum conditions and harvested when unripe. The kind of nutrients used has no direct effect on that.
 
Woo Hoo! That means I beat AJ in the comparison because my plants grow slower and under sub-optimal conditions.
I don't have them growing in a box so my temps aren't as high as his.
 
ABM....heck...I'm easy to beat...try beating BillyBoy...speaking of...wonder where he is?

... of course fruits etc that are allowed to grow slower and mature on the plant will have a higher nutritional value compared to fruit that are grown under optimum conditions and harvested when unripe...

yeah but, the only things I pick unripe is Jalapenos and I dang sure ain't picking them for the nutritional value.... :lol:
 
Hopefully I will have loads of fatallis this year and I will pick a bunch of unripe ones and throw them in the blender for some early hot sauce.
 
AlabamaJack said:
I am trying to understand why you wouldn't give your plants vitamins or growth hormones to improve their growth habits if these items have been used over 60 years without any ill side effects.
Click to expand...

Who's looking for problems? What is their methodology? Is there a limit on how much is safe? How was it established?

And, say, how many years did they give menopausal women hormones to increase their bone density and protect them from heart attacks and breast cancer because no one saw any ill effects? After all, common sense said that it should work. And gosh, didn't that work out well.

You know that I did some digging into this last year, and I'll tell you the same thing now as then, I did not see any peer reviewed papers that showed any ill effects of eating the fruits of plants given growth hormones. I also didn't see a single paper where anyone was *looking* to see if there were any ill effects of eating the fruits of plants given growth hormones. I mean, the only reason we know growth hormones given to livestock leaves residues in the meat we consume is because someone thought to look.

And, well, you're being rather speciesist, even though I hate that word. You don't really know if the run off from the over fertilizing you're doing is having any effect on the rest of the environment. We already know that a lot of things that homeowners dump on their yards don't cause problems there, but can cause problems downstream. Do we know if increasing the amount of plant hormones in streams and rivers has no effect on fish or wildlife? How about aquatic plant life?

For me, the environment I create in my yard is as important as perfect peppers and large flower blossoms. I really, really want the hummingbirds feeding at the Texas Star Hibiscus in the front yard to be healthy, happy hummingbirds. Same with the butterflies on the lantana, and the caterpillars on the spice bush and fennel.

You know how much I adore my little tree frogs? Well, I probably could have saved several tomato plants and a couple of pepper plants from early blight last summer, but who knows how many frogs I would have killed with the fungicide. The stinkbugs ran amok in August, but I didn't spray with Neem for fear of hurting the frogs and lizards and garter snakes that were in the garden by then, too. So I don't have as many peppers, or as perfect pods...I have tree frogs! I have anolis lizards and toads and snakes, and hoards of native bees! It thrills me more than I have words to express to lift up a branch of a pepper plant and see one of those little tree frogs skipping away.

If you want to be the Tim Taylor of the vegetable world, knock yourself out. Don't think I'm going to let you get away with calling it natural, mind you, cause it's not; but it's your yard, do whatever you want. For me, well, it's not like I'm going to have a shortage of peppers by not using plant hormones. I already give away bags and bags of peppers, no need for me to do something that has, from my perspective, the potential for harm.

I swear, sometimes it seems to me like some of you guys approach this like it's a competitive sport, not a garden.
 
Pam,

I approach it as it is - food to eat. Same as a rabbit, squirrel and if I had time to do it, a deer. Maximize my produce, as long as I don't create veritable, significant damage to my system.

Do I care if a bee sniffs pollen from a tomato plant that was fertilized with ammonia nitrate? Not at all. The plant is going to synthesize it and the only difference the stinging insect may see is the size of the bloom.

Sometimes I think tree huggers get so wrapped up in their "do no harm to the earth" philosophy they seem to forget the reason for growing plants is not for the beauty, nor the oxygen the plants provide, but to eat.

Then again, I use DDT to kill bugs I don't like.

Mike
 
wordwiz said:
Then again, I use DDT to kill bugs I don't like.
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And the bugs you do like. And the birds and frogs and lizards that eat them. And the...



Kinda sums up the difference in our philosophies, doesn't it?
 
Pam said:
Kinda sums up the difference in our philosophies, doesn't it?
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Pam,

Yep! If the birds and the bees want to eat dead aphids, then they may have weird offspring, such as having three wings.

As I said, I grow plants so I can eat their produce. OK, there are exceptions. People want plants for their garden that have not been treated with artificial chemicals - I'm doing that with my seedlings. But I'll use whatever makes my plants grow the best in my garden.

Mike
 
Pam said:
And, well, you're being rather speciesist, even though I hate that word. You don't really know if the run off from the over fertilizing you're doing is having any effect on the rest of the environment. We already know that a lot of things that homeowners dump on their yards don't cause problems there, but can cause problems downstream. Do we know if increasing the amount of plant hormones in streams and rivers has no effect on fish or wildlife? How about aquatic plant life?
Click to expand...

This is a valid point. We do know that eutrophication (yes, I had to look that up as I only knew the word in swedish) is caused by heavy use of nutriets, so heavy that a lot that isn't used by the crop gets into streams and lakes. But then we are talking about farming operations where tonnes are used, not hobby growers who use grams. It is not limited to "artificial" nutrients, but farmers are more likely to use more "artificial" nutrients then they think will actually be needed compared to "natural" nutrient because it is cheaper - they can't afford to overuse the "natural" stuff. For hobby growers cost isn't as big of an issue - the "organic" growers are more likely to overdose on the nutes because it's "natural" so it can't do any harm... "Natural" isn't necessarily better for the environment, only more expensive:)

The fruits won't be bad for us regardless of the kind of nutrients used because as someone else said, the plants will sythezise them. Not really sure about that word, but the plants will "filter" whatever we put in the soil before it gets to the fruit.
 
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