You Can’t Save The Chesapeake Bay

According to the Wines Vines Analytics group, there were 276 wineries in Virginia in 2018. The growth of this agricultural activity coincides with increased pesticide usage, not only because crop monocultures invite problems with insects, but also because this crop is perpetually prone to fungal problems in such a humid climate.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

The Washington Post published an edited version of this article online on August 20, 2021 and in print on August 22, 2021. 

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/20/do-we-even-care-about-health-chesapeake-bay/

“There never was much hope. Just a fool’s hope...” [The Return of the King by author J. R. Tolkien]

 

Close to 50 years after the Clean Waters Act was passed, the Chesapeake Bay remains on the EPA’s “dirty waters list”. Obviously, citizens haven’t taken very seriously the mandate “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters.”

 

Why? It’s been my experience that far too many people don’t believe that humans depend upon a properly functioning environment for their own lives. Perhaps the main reason for this disconnect is our ability to obtain food so easily by driving to a grocery store.

 

When your nourishment comes prepackaged, you haven’t got a clue to how vital a properly functioning environment is to its production. Unfortunately, most farmers and gardeners nowadays don’t have a clue either. If they did understand the importance of growing food in agreement with nature, neither would need to employ the pesticides, and anywhere near the amount of fertilizer, they do. If that statement sounds far-fetched, it isn’t.

 

Until rheumatoid arthritis made my hands much too painful to continue gardening, I grew all my own fruits and vegetables for decades without using one drop of pesticide. To enrich the soil, I returned every bit of organic matter from the kitchen that was inedible (including bones) to the land. And I left in place any dead herbaceous-plant material to decay where the nutrients borrowed from the soil for plant growth could be repaid for the benefit of future plants.

 

The “secret” to growing food naturally (as mankind has had to do for thousands of years without chemical fertilizers and pesticides that now run off to the Chesapeake Bay) is to embrace the dictates of “Mother Nature” instead of the misguided precepts put forth by garden writers, magazines and books, and university extension offices.

 

The horticultural/agricultural industry is based upon studies performed under artificial conditions, and they are done with the unrealistic expectation that you should be able to harvest virtually every bit of food that’s grown. Both situations result in erroneous views of wildlife, which is why horticulturists and scientists alike view numerous animals as “pests” that need to be exterminated.

 

But, when you encounter difficulties in your gardening/farming pursuits, it’s a sure sign you are doing something out of sync with the way the natural world works (and must work). In other words, nature is not out to get you; it’s simply responding to what you’re doing that’s inappropriate.

 

Just as you need to obey the laws set forth by man to maintain civility in society, you must obey the laws of the natural world, too. Two key mandates are usually overlooked by those wanting to garden/farm successfully.

 

·    You must include wild areas nearby containing plants disparaged as “weeds”. Those plants support the insect predators that can keep your garden/agricultural area in balance so you don’t encounter “pest” problems. They also feed native pollinators that help your plants to make the fruits you desire.

 

·    You must avoid growing large areas of only one kind of crop. Such unnaturally occurring plant monocultures can result in unnaturally high numbers of plant-feeding insects that can multiply rapidly.

 

Then, of course, there’s common sense: You must protect food plants from mammals with similar tastes to humans. Nowadays, we should accomplish this feat with fencing or some other kind of barrier around the food patch. Otherwise, you’d need to stay awake as people did long ago to protect their plants or animals—as mentioned in Luke 2:8 where shepherds guard their flocks of sheep by night.

 

Instead, our USDA issues permits to agriculturists to kill wild animals, even though no physical barriers have been erected around crops or grazing animals, nor guard animals employed. It’s as if our wildlife is supposed to somehow know man’s endeavors are off-limits.

 

You might argue that factory farming is mandatory with 7.9 billion mouths to feed. However, this point demonstrates why there never was much hope of cleaning the Chesapeake Bay and restoring it to good health. Only a fool could believe that an ever-increasing human population and environmental remediation are compatible.

 

Space for maintenance of health is limited (no organism can live well in overcrowded conditions) and is a requisite for maintaining clean habitat for us and the organisms that work to keep the environment working properly for our benefit.

 

Humans could have voluntarily limited the size of their families over the past half century via better family planning, but too many people erringly believed the Bible’s mandate “to go forth and multiply” applied only to mankind.

Yet, according to Genesis 1:22, “And God blessed the [living creatures], saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply on the earth.’” (The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, The World Publishing Company, 1962)

 

In other words, humans have blundered by not sharing the planet with wildlife.

NATURE ADVICE:

Someone needs to start the conversation regarding human-population growth and what it means for people and the Earth. That someone needs to be every person who understands the necessity of maintaining a properly functioning environment for human life to persist.

 

Talk with your church leaders because the laws of nature are incontrovertible; we limit our own numbers or we perish.

 

 Slug Lives Matter

Slugs are part of Mother Nature’s clean-up crew; they return nutrients to the soil for the benefit of plants (and gardeners!). Here, some slugs feed upon, and thus recycle, a discarded corn cob.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Folks really need to change their attitude towards wildlife in their yards. Humans cannot exist on this planet without the organisms that do the jobs required to keep our environment running properly. Therefore, instead of constantly grousing about wildlife, they really need to learn to show more respect and gratitude for these critters.

 

Let’s look at an example from the Internet of a gardener’s complaint about slugs, and examine the poor “solutions” given by the garden columnist to address this complaint.

 

https://edmontonjournal.com/life/homes/gardening/growing-things-outdoors-the-lettuce-eaters-club

 

·    Gardener: “I, too, have been waging the war with the slugs over the years. I wouldn’t mind if they ate an entire leaf one at a time but they are like greedy slobs at a smorgasbord going from leaf to leaf nibbling a little bit out of each.” (Something to consider: No one would ever talk about people behaving “like greedy slobs at a smorgasbord”. Perhaps we’d think less badly of wildlife if we didn’t use name-calling for wildlife either.)

 

The garden columnist offered a list of Band-Aid solutions. Rather than addressing the underlying cause[s] of the problem the gardener is complaining about, his recommendations serve only to interfere with the proper functioning of the environment.

·     “Do not leave any decomposing plant material laying [sic] about.”

·     “Remove dead leaves promptly.”

·     “Cultivate your soil regularly.”

·     “Boards, rocks and stones can also make good hiding spots. Remove these if slugs are a problem.”

·     “Keep your lawn neatly trimmed. Slugs will often use tall grass as a hiding spot.”

 

One of the “jobs” a slug performs is that of recycling decaying plant and animal matter. This vital activity provides nutrition for your plants by returning essential components to the soil your plants are growing in. In other words, its activity feeds your plants so you don’t need to spend money, time, and effort applying chemical fertilizers.

 

Therefore, the worst thing you can do is to remove all decomposing plant material, including dead leaves, as advised in this published list. If you don’t leave a slug’s preferred food in place, it has no choice except to turn to your plants when it’s starving.

 

Now, if you are trying to “live in harmony with nature”, the point of the writer’s column, you are not supposed to be killing the organisms out there. And yet, the advice to “cultivate your soil regularly” is suggested for just that purpose.

 

Mixing up the soil regularly, either with a rototiller or a hand cultivator, chops up or otherwise injures critters within the soil, or exposes them to light and drying air that they are trying to escape by living within the dirt. Additionally, you might expose eggs that will either dry out in the sunshine or get eaten by predators, both of which negatively impacts the perpetuation of life.

 

The suggestion to remove rocks and stones that comprise a natural part of the environment because slugs hide there is not exactly living in harmony with nature either. And keeping your lawn trimmed so slugs can’t hide in tall grass is a very poor idea for the health of the grass itself. People cut their grass so short that it’s unable to grow longer roots to survive drought, and is also not even able to shade the ground to conserve moisture.

 

The last suggestion made by the garden columnist is the worst of all: “If these all fail, Safers Slug Bait is my go-to solution. It’s an eco-friendly product and targets the slugs without harming other organisms.” Whoa! This person could not have made a more egregiously wrong statement if he tried.

 

The active ingredient in this product is sodium ferric EDTA, which is also known as sodium ferric ethylenediaminetetraacetate.

 

https://www.saferbrand.com/safer-brand-slug-and-snail-killer-2-lb-sb125

 

It’s a salt that “works by interacting with and destroying hemocyanin, a copper-based compound found in the blood of molluscs [slugs and snails] and arthropods [insects, spiders, and both land and marine crustaceans; emphasis mine] which is used to carry oxygen.”

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferric_sodium_EDTA

 

Therefore, this poison will kill any of the kinds of animals I’ve listed above within brackets, which is a far cry from being “an eco-friendly product [that] targets the slugs without harming other organisms”.

 

Mind you, Safer tells you that its product “[c]an be used around pets and wildlife”. Indeed, even Wikipedia tells you, “The compound is much safer than Metaldehyde and does not pose a significant risk to birds, pets, or humans so long as the bait is not consumed [emphasis mine].”

 

Well, it may be unlikely that humans would ingest this pesticide, but the likelihood is much, much higher for spiders, land crustaceans (pillbugs), and some kinds of insects to eat this substance. And I’d be very surprised if a bird wouldn’t pick up this bait and swallow it, either because it thought the bait was food or the grit it needs for grinding food in its gizzard.

 

It’s wise to keep in mind that pesticides are typically nonselective poisons that can kill far more creatures than you might expect. Why not create a nature-friendly garden that supports life on Earth instead of destroying it?

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

You shouldn’t believe most of what you hear or read about pesticides. They are often described in terms that make them sound totally harmless, but since when is killing animals harmless? It’s cruel and inhumane to these organisms, which should be taken into account even if you don’t want them around.