Read: In 1991 Swedish gardeners used...

Marianne in Sweden

Can't speak for other gardeners as there's plenty of chemicals available in the garden centre!

I don't claim to be organic but I do restrict my use of chemicals. I don't use inorganic weedkiller or insect killer. However I do use slug pellets and ant killer but limit it to applications in spring only, when I feel that there is no alternative.

I sometimes wonder why I bother considering that I use a whole raft of other chemical products in the house, from cleaning products to printing ink to paints, which I'm sure don't do me or the environment any good.

I have used glysophate before on bindweed but not for a couple of years, and one tub of that is the only herbicide I've got. I used some non-organic fertilizer in slow-release pellet form in a couple of container plants indoors and outdoors over last summer. Apart from that, nothing. I don't use any pesticides.

As for non-gardening chemical usage, I've been getting greener about household cleaning products, but I've never used eco-paints because they are so expensive.

I tried the eco-paint :) Then took it back and exchanged it for the real stuff. I'm afraid there's a reason for those volatile organic compounds being in there!

There's a lot of "organic" products available on the shelves now and I'm sure that many people buy them because they are there. There are very few insecticides and fungicides left on the market now after European regulatory changes over the last 5 years, and fewer herbicides. I'm not sure that people use less weedkiller now but the ones they use have had to change. Fertilisers have hardly changed but there are many more formulations of the same basic chemicals. General fertiliser use is much lower than I observed in the US but where it is used it tends to be at much higher rates than is sensible.

I'm sure that climate change has a lot to do with the trend towards gardening organically. Now that we have hotter summers there simply isn't as much need to spray. I can't speak from experience as I have not yet tried to take my plants organically through a cool, damp summer but I imagine such conditions would push a lot of people back to chemicals again. This year I rubbed glyphosate on my bindweed and put a few slug pellets around my heleniums, that was all.

mariannese: I find it extraordinary that Swedish gardeners use 10 times more "cides" than Swedish farmers (though I'm not in the U.K.). I would have to guess the reverse would be true in the U.S. Specifically, farmers use far more "cides" in the U.S. so they can grow more crops (easier) and bring a better-looking crop to market. Many are into "no-till" farming here--which begins with "spraying down" (accumulated) weeds in the beginning of a growing season, with chemical herbicides. Herbicides and pesticides are used to avoid the intensive labor of tilling weeds and hand-picking insects. Since World War II, chemical companies have done an excellent job of instilling the idea in farmers' minds that chemicals make for more and easier growing, and are therefore, a necessity. Also, since a farmer's livelihood depends on his ability to produce marketable crops, many conventional farmers feel compelled to use cides, to sustain themselves and their families. Strangely (or not), I know many conventional farmers who use cides on their commercial crops but do not use them on their home garden crops. Of course there is a small percentage that is ambivalent to the use of cides on home (kitchen) garden crops, but a majority of home gardeners in this country seem to have the good sense not to dump poison on the food they intend to eat, before eating it. (I certainly hope I'm not giving gardeners here more credit than they deserve; but of the fairly-large numbers of gardeners I know, I find this to be true.)

Swedish gardeners use 10 times more "cides" than Swedish farmers
This is of course, "per area of land" (and almost certainly includes both ornamental as well as home vegetable gardens, with probably the bulk coming from lawn applications), and so the farmers actually use far more in total because of the greater acreage ;) The same is true in the US, more or less, and in the UK. It is very popular to gripe about this, and also very popular for people to continue eating the food grown in this way. Few people realise how incredibly cheap food is in Britain, relatively, and it is one of very few items which is not vastly more expensive here than in the US.

Posssibly marrianese could clarify the term "gardener" as it pertains to the discussion in The Garden magazine. In the U.S., I doubt a homeowner applying lawn chemicals would be considered a "gardener". In fact, here, we distinguish between the two; i.e., certain chemicals may be available for "lawn AND garden". I certainly understand that it is "per area of land", as her post states that in 1991 gardeners used 10 times more chemicals PER SQUARE METER than farmers; I continue to find that extraordinary--unless in Sweden (and the U.K.), homeowners applying lawn chemicals are considered "gardeners". We have millions of homeowners here who have no gardens, whatever (vegetable or ornamental), but they definitely all have lawns. Possibly I should wait for the clarification.

I do find it disturbing in the U.S. that vegetable and ornamental gardens are becoming increasingly conspicuous by their absence--not only in urban and suburban settings, but in country settings, as well. Almost exclusively, these days, (in the AVERAGE family) both partners work at jobs away from the home, and few have time to care for gardens of any kind.

In the U.S., I doubt a homeowner applying lawn chemicals would be considered a "gardener".

I have in fact seen exactly the same kind of statistics applied to US "gardeners" (in relation to chemical runoff into the Chesapeake) and I'm almost certain that it included lawn use. The main problem with statistics, of course, is that they are almost always presented by someone with an agenda and rarely with full explanations of "the small print" ;)

shrubs_n_bulbs: If you ever see such statistics again (from the U.S.), would you be so kind as to post them? I certainly don't doubt what you say--just wondering who would consider lawn care and gardening the same (in the U.S.).

Lawn care and gardening are two distinctly different endeavors in the U.S. Many homeowners cut their grass and apply (or have a lawn-care company apply) chemicals to their lawns, who have never gardened a day in their lives.

In my neighborhood, homeowners have lawn care companies make synthetic-chemical applications to their lawns--not wishing to handle the chemicals, themselves (though they allow their children to freely run barefoot through the poison). (Wonder who would be the "gardener" there--the homeowner or the lawn-care company?)

Lawn care companies must "flag" any lawns where they have made 'cide applications, for all to see (red flags, attached to wires poked into the soil perimeter, noting 'cide applications).

Any person living near a yard that receives 'cide applications from a lawn care company--with a note from his/her doctor that he/she cannot tolerate synthetic 'cides--can file such notice with the state, who in turn requires the lawn care company to give 24-hour notice (by phone) to the petitioner before they make a 'cide application near his/her residence.

(This in my state, and I'm sure, many others.)

I think we have one of those semantic themes running here. When I first started visiting Garden web I was struck by the specific use of the word 'garden' in the US. The Garden is the magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society so I imagine they use the word 'garden' in its British sense. In the UK your garden is all the land around your house. Thus cutting the grass, raking leaves and trimming hedges is all gardening. We do not disinguish between the yard and the garden. We do not, generally, have as much land to play with as the US and most people look after their own lawns, probably less intensively than in the US, as grass grows pretty easily in our climate. As an allotment holder I can't say I know anyone who puts chemicals near their food crops other than slug pellets, which, much as I hate them, are the only means of growing a lettuce on my heavy clay soil.

I have been away and not followed this discussion lately: I use the same definition as The Garden, I think, and lawn care certainly comes under gardening in my book. In Sweden we use the word "trädgård" to cover the garden, i.e. the outdoor space around a house or home. However, most Swedish homeowners are not much into gardening except lawn care so I was shocked that they use so much herbicides and pesticides as they apparently do. It surprises me very much because our garden magazines are generally all organic, it is not even an issue. The latest big encyclopedia on gardening hardly mentions herbicides, and the most up-to-date manual of pest control for the general public says one has to live with most pests and the best option is good husbandry, choosing resistant varieties and encouraging birds. For instance, the only recommended cure for aphids is soap water. For pear pest the only cure is to remove all sabine junipers, for apple pests there are pheromone traps and sticky rings around the stems. But as all the Bayer products are sold here I suppose the common gardener ignores all this information from the garden experts or never learns about it, and doses his soil as usual.

I should like to know if this pattern has changed lately, in Sweden and Britain. Perhaps new statistics will be published soon, 1991 was a long time ago.