I suspect that part of the reason you don't have a lot of insect and disease problems is that you don't use posions. I beleive by not using them you create a micro enviornment that allows the natural balance to prevail.

john

I found your link very useful and I will be keeping it in mind when I have to purchase some of my veggies instead of growing them..as I insist on ORGANIC!!!!!:)
Dusty

Luckily, as home growers we're not trying to manage 10s-100s+ acres of a single crop.

I think a lot of people would be irked by a visit to the apple orchard from bloom time to picking in some parts of the country.

That said...pretty much ALL of these pesticide on veggies issues come with the residues left on the outside, not pesticide creeping around the inside tissues or whatever. A good washing/scrubbing sorts most of it out...even the apples.

One more thing...

My garden is organic. It's because it's easy to do and I understand pest/predator cycles. I know what I need to do to manage visits by various pests and to what extent I need to manage them. It's also small enough for me to do this and I'm fully able-bodied.

When it comes to "non-organic" veggies i pretty much don't care if it's something I know I can wash off easily. Apples, peaches, nectarines, peppers, greens, etc. are great at snagging pesticides. All of them I can easily wash except greens for salads (mostly out of laziness) so when it comes to salad greens, that's where I go organic.

Thanks for the replies.

John, I think you're right. I have plenty of lady bugs and their larvae and parasitic wasps in the garden as well as the occasional preying mantis. I also have some tree frogs living in amongst the strawberries and would love to reintroduce some Western Toads. They use to live in the surrounding area before the housing developments went up and the vernal pools were drained.

I'm lucky enough to have room for 5 raised beds, approx. 5'X12', so I can rotate crops each year. That way I'm not growing the tomatoes, squash, peppers, corn and beans in the same soil year after year...

I just started growing my own winter veggies 3 years ago. Carrots, garlic, onions, lettuce, spinach and peas. It was actually the e-coli scare on spinach and bagged lettuce a few years back that got me started, not worry of pesticides.

Funny, I never ate spinach until the year of the scare and now I don't think I could do without it.

nc-crn,

We do wash any store bought veggies thoroughly before we use them, although like you mention, the leafy greens can take only so much scrubbing ;)

I'm more concerned about some of the root vegetables. When I was in college I worked for the Plant Pathology department at the U. of Minnesota during the summers.

An awful lot of systemic pesticides were used on the potatoes we grew. I can still remember tasting the Temik pesticide a day or two after leaving the fields... I know it's supposed to break down in the plant tissues after a certain period of time, but...

Oh yeah...potatoes bathe in chemicals at harvest time.

Unlike carrots or onions, they not only get a full dose of chemicals during growing, but commercial harvesters tend to herbicide the tops (green) of the plants prior to harvest which finds it's way into the soil where the potatoes are.

Still, though...I'm just very glad commercial apples and stone fruits are easy to clean because I have never seen so much chemical use in my life with any vegetable compared to an orchard fruit operation.

Interesting post, thank you for providing the link.

What really scared me was reading an FDA report a few years ago (IÂll be damd if I can find it now) on pesticide residue on citrus fruits. It basically found that washing and scrubbing could not clean oranges and lemons adequately, pesticide was still present. Of course most people donÂt use the outer skin but I tend to use zest in a lot of my recipes. Since reading the report I buy organic fruit and vegetables as much as possible. My home garden is organic.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I use insecticidal soap for pests and only resort to the wrath of Dow, Dupont, etc. to extract revenge on pests when my plant is lost anyway.

I never do this in my garden, only on container plants moved out of my growing area!

Given my age, before I was aware IÂve probably ingested enough to cause any ill effects that may manifest but hey, still better safe than sorry!

Hope we didn't ruin anyone's dinner tonight! ;)

huachuma,

here is where that site got their info, it has a more subdued website name, and lists the ratings on all the produce tested.

Click on 'full list' to see all the produce ranked.

Here is a link that might be useful: dirty dozen

Thanks greenmullberry! Pretty much validates nr-crn's observations noted earlier...

I've been thinking about buying a semi-dwarf peach and cherry tree even before I knew about these issues.