My essay for the Spring 2013 issue of edibleWASATCH centers on gardening in the chemical age. It is an argument to keep toxic chemicals out of the ecological garden.
Here are the concluding paragraphs from that piece.
"In terms of dealing with the novel chemical environment that increasingly affects our landscapes, neighborhoods, work places, homes, and bodies, my advice is to avoid any unnecessary, avoidable exposure. In industrialized countries, we have immersed ourselves in a chemical milieu with which we have had very little biological experience and essentially no evolutionary experience. We cannot wishfully adapt to tolerate exposures to toxic substances. And we, as a population, can't immediately breed fast enough to adapt genetically."
"In some ways, it's choosing for ourselves and our families not to be test animals. The experience we have had in the past 68 years is alarming enough to justify exercising some commonsense skepticism. In the face of possible risk and with insufficient information about that risk, avoid the risk. Avoid the dangerous, the expensive,and the uncertain, especially if safe, economical, and certain methods are available."
"Take responsibility for your food. Grow as much as you can, and grow it organically. Make your natural, safe and non-toxic garden the foundation of your approach to health."
The section immediately below is from Gardening: An Ecological Approach where I briefly describe a dozen ecological concepts as they apply to gardening. The Edible Wasatch essay expands on this "no toxics" concept.
The "no toxics chemicals" concept, excerpted from Gardening: An Ecological Approach. © Fred Montague