Liquid potashium

[Izhar]

Its available at the shops infront of old sabzi mandi... you can also buy powder potash and dissolve 1 teaspoon in 2 liter water and use weekly...

[Munir]

Izhar, Very briefly-there is a fast increasing trend of growing organic fruits & veggies,now even in Pakistan. How essential or beneficial are the organic produce & what & how serious are the health risks of using fertilizers & pesticides,separately ? It is to examine if this exercise worth the effort ? Views of other members are also welcome.

[Izhar]

Izhar, Very briefly-there is a fast increasing trend of growing organic fruits & veggies,now even in Pakistan. How essential or beneficial are the organic produce & what & how serious are the health risks of using fertilizers & pesticides,separately ? It is to examine if this exercise worth the effort ? Views of other members are also welcome.

I have been discussing this often with my gardening mates, organic gardening is one of the growing trends for sure. However, limitations occur when we grow on commercial scale, high yielding crops consume a lot of nutrients from the soil... we have to replenish them regularly.. organic fertilizers are low in nutrients cost-wise... so ultimately the crop will be costlier than conventional farming... but it will be worthy in long term as it builds up soil, making it fertile and alive.. the main problem occurs in pest control.. in organic cultivation we can only control the pests in initial stages via traps or growing under net/tunnels.. organic pesticides are very weak and take a long time for their effect to be visible, during this time there will be a lot of damage and the yield will be significantly low compared to conventional... but in the long run, the produce will be delicious taste wise and nutrient wise...

Health risks COULD occur due to pesticides... however, till date there is no proper study that use of pesticide is causing health problems.. people generally dont agree with this but without concrete proof this will remain debatable..

Use of synthetic fertilizers without proper soil analysis is causing the main damage.. when we put the nutrients in soil which are already present in soil, they become over saturate & form complex compounds and plants cannot absorb these complex compounds so the soil becomes sterile and dead... microorganisms help break these complex compounds into useful nutrients but without organic matter in soil, microorganisms perish.. farmer thinks that the low yield is due to less fertilizer so he puts more and more... a vicious cycle is formed which leads to death or once a fertile land...

My point of view is that, we should do a combination of both organic and conventional farming... enrich soil with organic matter and use synthetic nutrients to fill the nutrient gaps shown in lab analysis of soil... when the plants are healthy they will be more immune to the pests.. we can use sticky traps, pheromone traps to stop the pest attack at initial stage... by using organic fertilizers the use of synthetic fertilizer will greatly diminish and ultimately it will be negligible in long run...

[Munir]

Thank you Izhar for a prompt & elaborate response. I largely agree with you. It is difficult to grow organic fruit & veggies-whereas,one may be able to do somewhat without applying synthetic fertilizers by using organic FLM & other substitutes,it is very difficult to fight the pests with organic methods/totkas. In the end, one gets low yield & stunted or infested produce.May be it is possible to get better performance in controlled environments, presently not much in practice in Pakistan. More later; till then request other members to share their views & experiences.