‘Free’ can mean several things, and all of them are important when it comes to gardening. In September I wrote a post comparing heirloom gardening with free software like Linux, and those of you who are involved in free software or intellectual rights reform will know exactly what I am talking about here.
There is increasingly an encroachment of unnecessary commercial products into gardening. All of us should consider using products that are really useful, but at the same time make sure we don’t lose free or cheap alternatives. We also shouldn’t waste our money on unnecessary products, just because they are marketed to us, because then only large companies will benefit.
For many of us heirloom plants are exciting because we know that with few exceptions they are better than commercial alternatives and are free (or at least cheaper). Most of us are also aware that heirloom plants are hard to come by, and many of them are endangered. For some reason a lot of people don’t fully make the connection that this is because large companies aggressively and successfully market alternatives.
Don’t give your money to the wrong people! Buying commercial alternatives endangers the availability of cheaper and often better products, and can have environmental and social consequences you don’t expect. Choose cheaper and/or local products from a local source, over expensive imported items. If you can, grow or make them yourself.
Your Plants Don’t Need Vitamins!
Companies that sell food make huge profits by breaking down what we eat into a series of components like vitamins, minerals, starches, sugars, carbohydrates and so on, or even just into food groups like fruit and vegetables, dairy, etc. By promoting these individual components (or expensive alternatives like artificial sweeteners) and encouraging us to eat more of the right ones, or more of their alternative products, they get us to buy and eat much more than we ordinarily would. What we are all now realizing is that the secret to health are in Michael Pollans 7 words: Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants. The similar term often used with plants is ‘feed the soil, not the plants’.
For 98% of gardeners, fertilizers are not an issue, they are simply unnecessary and a waste of money. Most people who use fertilizers do so because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t, not because they really need them. The most common commercial fertilizers available to gardeners are waste products of industry, and they sell and promote them to make money, not because they are useful products. Fertilizers are an issue for commercial farmers because they grow more intensively, don’t normally practice crop rotation and the use of products like compost is not economically feasible. Gardeners are not farmers, and don’t need the products farmers use!
The only thing your garden needs is sensible crop rotation and homemade compost. Maybe you will need a little lime, with some plants and if your soil is very acid. For beginning gardeners you may need to purchase some compost to get started, but generally you don’t need very much. Together with a few tools, this is all you need!
Don’t get caught up in the ‘what if’ logic of vitamins! What if you are missing something, and you don’t know it? Maybe you will get sick if you don’t take a multi vitamin! We spend all summer in our garden, what if the ground is missing something and what if we end up wasting our time? Don’t fall for this.
Don’t Buy Expensive Potting Soil
Besides garden tools, potting soil is one thing most gardeners buy. Of course it’s always best to use your own compost, but it’s not suitable for starting seedlings because it contains too many micro-organisms and most people consider compost too dirty for indoor use. Most potting soil is based on peat, and there are some environmental issues with this, so it’s really best to avoid peat products if at all possible. At the same time, it’s important to put things into to perspective, and not use an expensive alternative without thinking about it.
Peat is naturally occurring, and grows in bogs. Peat lands cover about 3% of the world’s land mass, and about 7% of this has been commercially exploited. Unfortunately a part of this exploitation has taken place in environmentally sensitive areas, often in unsustainable ways. Why with so much to choose from do they need to take it in an environmentally destructive way? I suppose it comes down to profits. It seems like it is the same with many things these days. Finland is currently generating 2.6% of it’s energy by burning peat, and in the process releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all of it’s cars combined. I don’t have reliable figures for peat consumption from the various sources, but consider that industrial use like this probably dwarfs consumption by home gardeners. In addition, consumption by gardeners is very small when compared to the world’s total peat reserves.
As gardeners, we should not allow expensive commercial products to replace a cheap natural resource like this in our gardens.
Being the one thing almost all gardeners buy every year, there is the potential for companies to make huge profits by marketing peat in different ways. For example marketing it as an environmentally unfriendly product, and encouraging you to buy alternatives. Probably the most common way is to sell you value added peat moss, in the form of mixed potting soil. By itself peat does not have enough nutrients to sustain plant growth, so nutrients need to be added. By adding a few cents worth of chemical fertilizer, companies can sell it at a much higher price as potting soil. Are you an organic gardener? You’re not if you use commercial potting soil or seed starting mixes!
One of the best and cheapest potting soils can be made by mixing peat moss with compost. As little as 25% compost is suitable for most plants, but of course more compost is better and 100% compost is the best. Again, this would not be suitable for young plants or starting seedlings, because of the micro-organisms in the compost.
Don’t expect making your own peat/compost potting soil to be easy. In my area, potting soil is such an important source of revenue that garden centers which stock peat moss at all, generally won’t sell it in the spring when it would be in competition with their potting soils. I always have to buy it out of season. Often when I am able to find it for sale, a clerk in the store comes running up to me warning me I am buying the wrong thing, and tells me I should by potting soil instead. Don’t be surprised if you have to fight for the right to buy it!
Botanical Gardens Are Not Your Friend
The Convention on Biological Diversity, implemented in 1993 and since then been the source of much criticism, dramatically changed the way public plant collections like botanical gardens and research institutions function.
Before this time public plant collections were funded to different degrees by local governments or through individual donations. The problem was many seed collections we underfunded, and vulnerable to failing governments and other financial difficulties. In addition, large seed companies like Monsanto and Syngenta depended on these seed collections as the source of the genetic material for commercial products they developed like their F1 hybrid or GM varieties, and were increasing finding it difficult to patent their varieties under these circumstances.
To very briefly summarize a very complex treaty, a compromise was worked out where large companies who had an interest in the genetic material would guarantee funding for these collections. What these companies got in return was the exclusive rights to use the genetic materials, and the right to patent them. Nearly every country is bound by this and related treaties, obliging them not to release and plant material to the public. This effectively means these collections have been turned into museums, and they only way we as people have the right to use the plants is if large seed companies decide to sell them to us.
So what does this really mean in practice? It means botanical gardens have become platforms for large companies to promote their products. By declaring themselves ‘peat free’, in order to save the environment, they really mean they are promoting peat alternatives for their own commercial commercial interests.
When you go to a public collection featuring edible plants, for example fruit trees, expect to be told wonderful stories of old varieties and biodiversity, be given delicious samples, then be herded into their store where they only sell commercial varieties. Because the old tasty varieties are fresh in your mind, and none of what they sell is clearly labeled, they expect you will probably buy their products without thinking.
If you want to grow the kinds of plants in public plant collections, you need to buy them from some place that specializes in old variety plants or get them from a fellow gardener or a seed exchange.
How do you know you are buying the right thing?
Buy local products from local sources, avoid brand named items and choose the cheapest alternatives. For many people buying the cheapest alternatives is counter-intuitive, because they feel they can get a higher quality more environmentally friendly product if they spend more money. This may be true with locally made products, but for commercial products the reality is that it almost always comes down to marketing, and if you spend more money you just give your money to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
When you buy plants or seeds, buy them from a place that specializes in heirloom varieties. The reason for this is most places that sell commercial variety seeds and plants have signed an agreement with their suppliers not to distinguish between commercial and heirloom varieties. This means nothing will be clearly marked, and you won’t know what you are buying. The only way to get around this problem is by buying your plant materials from a company that doesn’t sell any commercial varieties. If you want Open Pollinated or heirloom varieties, don’t buy them unless they are clearly marked as such, or the company you are buying them from doesn’t sell anything else!
