Weeding the Web

Which? Gardening annoy Soil Association with results of research

Ouch! The latest Which? Gardening magazine crashed through the letterbox yesterday, having blazed a trail in the day's newspapers.

In a two-year research project, Which? found home-grown organic produce to be no more nutritious or tasty than non-organic. In some cases it came off distinctly worse.

Here we go again.

Interested parties have leapt to defend organic. According to the Daily Mail, the Soil Association has branded the research "irresponsible". Actually, a quick look at the Soil Association's press release shows that it's not the research per se that it deems irresponsible, but the use of pesticides that have been implicated in the rapid decline of the bee population and the use of metaldehyde.

Much is made of the result that tasters preferred the non-organic tomatoes, but several thoughts come to mind. Taste is affected by the soil in which a plant is grown, and by the water and feed it receives...

Pleasing society

This weekend I bought twenty-five seed potatoes, a bottle of Armillatox, 400g of shallot bulbs and 5lbs of bird seed, and still had change from a tenner.  How come? Because my local horticultural society runs a shop with very advantageous prices. Membership costs £3 a year, so, given that small packets of seed potatoes at the local garden centre cost around £3 each, I'm quids in already.

Horticultural societies are much overlooked by people starting out in gardening. Perhaps it's because they picture turgid lectures on growing orchids, and fussy, cloth-capped fellows entering the produce show.