Pakistan Gardening Forum

Organic Vegetables, a word I see now a days and know not what it means.
Can anyone make me wiser as I have yet to see an inorganic vegetable.
Arif

my userstanding is that organic vegetables have been fertilised using organic fertilizers only as opposed to chemical fertilizers and have not been sprayed wth chemicals for pest control or other diseases
hope the above is correct
irfan saeed

isaeed wrote:my userstanding is that organic vegetables have been fertilised using organic fertilizers only as opposed to chemical fertilizers and have not been sprayed wth chemicals for pest control or other diseases
hope the above is correct
irfan saeed

Irfan Saeed is not sure he only hopes what he believes is correct.Any other opinion?

The term "organic" as used in agriculture has nothing to do with chemical terminology such as inorganic chemistry or organic chemistry. If it were a chemistry term then we have 99% of man-made pesticides, which are nothing but traditional organic chemicals. The term organic farming/ vegetables is rather a marketing term which implies that no synthetic fertilizers, man made pesticides have been used; everything that was used on the farm and processing came from organic (= once a living matter) sources like manure etc.

With M Farooq. There's also a sustainability angle to organics. If trying to go organic uses up more resources than otherwise, it beats the purpose.

In other words every thing grown in this country a few decades ago was organic and now it is not.
Is the vegetable grown on organic fertilisers different in any way from the one grown on Chemical fertilisers (on analyses).
If you were given two cucumbers an organic and other non organic would you by taste be able to tell which is which?

Muhammad Arif Khan wrote:In other words every thing grown in this country a few decades ago was organic and now it is not.
Is the vegetable grown on organic fertilisers different in any way from the one grown on Chemical fertilisers (on analyses).
If you were given two cucumbers an organic and other non organic would you by taste be able to tell which is which?

I think there might be little bit of difference in taste for fruits e.g. a mango ripened on tree (the organic way) with a mango ripened by chemical means (using carbide, which is so popular in our culture). At times there is no difference, in my experience with organic products...except in price :-)

We should keep in mind that fertilizers (man made or natural) are not a health problem but the pesticides (which includes everything herbicide , fungicides etc) are. Nobody knows the long term effects of anything. I mean, who is willing to undertake study for 20-50 years? This problem is more serious in countries like ours where pesticide residue in food products is perhaps never monitored before going to the market.

As you know DDT was an ultra-safe pesticide few decades ago but now it is a completely unsafe product when people realized that it is going to sit in the environment for 50 years including the fat in the human body. So organic vs. conventional agriculture is an interesting debate.

I think there might be little bit of difference in taste for fruits e.g. a mango ripened on tree (the organic way) with a mango ripened by chemical means (using carbide, which is so popular in our culture). At times there is no difference, in my experience with organic products...except in price
Mango ripened on the tree is called TAPKA, It is much inferior in quality then that of PAIL. Mangos were ripened through PAIL,even before use of carbide, the gas released by carbide has made ripening easy without temperature control.

We should keep in mind that fertilizers (man made or natural) are not a health problem but the pesticides (which includes everything herbicide , fungicides etc) are. Nobody knows the long term effects of anything. I mean, who is willing to undertake study for 20-50 years? This problem is more serious in countries like ours where pesticide residue in food products is perhaps never monitored before going to the market.
I totally agree with you.

In early sixties DDT was banned, in a gathering in USA 1964 a speaker said" we have thousands tons of this indestructible poison, what should we do about it" I got up and said sell it to third world countries, they all laughed but that is exactly what was done.

We buy every thing without question what is projected on the internet, try to read what is concealed.
The pesticide kills the worm/insects, they are eaten by birds who get poisoned and die, they also kill the living beneficial organisms in the soil.
I have stopped growing plants requiring pesticide sprays including Roses.
Arif

I have a small vegetable garden and i can vouch that my organic produce tastes much better than the vegetables sold in the market which most certainly have been harvested using chemical fertilizers and sprays.So much for the taste factor.The long term effects on the body due to chemicals used for fertilization and pest and disease control in commercial agriculture may be debatable and subject to long term trials and tests but some dont want to wait until facts are established one way or the other.They take the safer route hence the going popularity of organic foods.
Irfan Saeed

Would you classify kmc khaad, made from animal offal, organic?