VegSocUK Information Sheet GARDENING FOR VEGETARIANS Gardening seems a very innocent pleasure, but for vegetarians it can be a minefield of difficulties! There is a lot of information available about organic growing, but organic is not synonymous with vegetarian. Although organic methods try to prevent damage to the environment, they often necessitate the use of slaughterhouse by-products and other items derived from animal slaughter like blood and bone meal and fish meal. Organic methods also display no qualms about killing so called pests. Many vegetarians want to garden without using animal products and without any unnecessary killing of even the humblest animal. We don't pretend to be laying down definitive rules on this subject but here are a few notes that might help you to manage your garden in a way that causes the minimum of animal suffering. FERTILISERS Try not to use peat if you can help it. Britain's peat bogs are rapidly disappearing with the consequent destruction of wildlife. Two million tonnes of peat are sold to gardeners every year! Use home-made compost if you can or buy composted forest bark a renewable resource from managed plantations. A brand new product will be appearing in garden centres during 1990, composted coconut fibre or coir. This consists of the outer husks of coconuts so it is an ecologically acceptable, renewable resource. Trials have shown it performs as well as peat-based compost. Spent mushroom compost, spent hops (as a top dressing) and composted stable manure are alternative fertilisers. Dried blood and fish meal are often used to add nitrogen to the soil, these are definitely not vegetarian products. You should also look out for various kinds of composted manures that are on sale these days, some even labelled organic as many of them contain manure from factory farmed animals or droppings from battery-kept chickens. Brands carrying the Soil Association's symbol come from free range houses. Seaweed fertilisers are a good and acceptable substitute. Calcified seaweed however, is crushed coral, which is technically animal and besides, the way it is harvested is not good for the sea-bed environment! Bonemeal is a slaughterhouse byproduct. In addition to being non vegetarian, we hear that now organic growing is on the increase, bonemeal is being imported from South American countries where cattle ranching is helping to destroy the rainforest! There is no evidence yet that BSE might be transmitted through bonemeal, but in view of the uncertainties about the origin and transmission of this disease and the fact that the causative agent seems to survive heat treatment, this is something that should be taken into consideration. There is also the probability that bonemeal may actually contain the cremated remains of pet cats and dogs. Don't use a product called worm compost without investigating its source. Some methods of making it are acceptable, but others may cause injury to the worms, or even kill them. If you make your own compost, you know what's gone into it so you can be sure that it is acceptable! Invest in a compost bin, or make your own, or if you are really short of space, use a heavy duty polythene sack. Put a shovelful of soil at the bottom to provide the organisms that start off the fermenting process, then add layers of kitchen waste, fallen leaves, grass cuttings and any other organic waste matter, even shredded paper will compost, used kitchen roll and paper hankies (if you must use them! There are more environmentally-friendly alternatives) will compost very easily. Tough things like cabbage stalks and banana skins should be cut into smaller pieces. Annual weeds can be put in whole but perennial weeds should have their roots cut off and discarded, never put any part of the plant bindweed into your compost, even small pieces will root and your garden will have a wonderful crop of bindweed when you spread the compost! Make sure you don't add quantities of extra soil when you add weeds, it can slow down the fermentation process. If you are using the polythene sack method, tie the sack off when it is nearly full and pierce two or three air holes in the sides and leave to rot down until about a third of the original bulk is left, then turn out and spread on your soil. Most compost bins have provision for you to remove compost from the bottom without emptying the entire bin so the process can be continuous. Some completely inorganic fertilisers are available, although frowned upon by the organic movement, they do have the advantage of being produced without any animal exploitation. Phosphate rock is mined from natural deposits and superphosphate is produced by treating it with sulphuric acid. Potash (potassium) is also mined from deposits of potassium chloride laid down when ancient seas dried up. Potash is suitable for immediate application and doesn't need further treatment. Inorganic nitrogen fertilisers are based on ammonia, which in turn is made from nitrogen extracted from the air. The usual fertilisers are ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate, the latter is also a byproduct of the steel and manmade fibre industries. The Fertiliser Manufacturers' Association says that as far as it is aware, no animal testing of inorganic fertilisers is done in Britain as the fertilisers have stood the test of time and, if used properly, should do no harm. However, some foreign companies have carried out animal-based research. If you have just treated your garden or lawn with an inorganic fertiliser, do keep any vegetarian pets like rabbits and tortoises from grazing on it until there has been a good fall of rain to wash the fertiliser in, concentrated fertiliser can poison if ingested. One of the objections to vegetarianism you sometimes hear is that without animal farming, there wouldn't be enough manure to make organic farming possible. People who think this forget about their own waste products. Human faeces can be safely composted without hazard to health if a simple process is followed. This provides a truly humane source of fertiliser, it saves the pollution of waterways and coasts caused by our present system of sewage disposal, it conserves plant nutrients one person's annual excrement is the equivalent of 25kg of commercially produced 20:10:10 NPK fertiliser. There is no real objection to using human excrement as fertiliser except in people's minds. For instructions on how to construct a simple, safe, odorless Eco-loo, contact Practical Alternatives and/or the National Centre for Alternative Technology. Plants of the pea family, including ornamentals like sweet peas and lupins, have the ability to fix nitrogen from the air. They do this by means of special bacteria which live in nodules in the roots, so after growing a crop of peas, beans, sweet peas etc don't pull the roots out when the plant is finished, dig them back into the soil to release the nitrogen. PEST CONTROL Perhaps the best way to control insect pests is to invite natural predators into your garden. If you have room, dig a pond to encourage frogs, this needs to be an informal pond with varying depths and at least one side sloping up gradually so the frogs have easy access. Toads too are good friends. They don't spend as much time as frogs do in water but they need some undisturbed, dampish nooks and crannies to hide in. Always have a bird bath and make sure it is kept topped up with clean water and that it doesn't freeze over in winter. Encourage the birds to stay near your garden in winter when there are few insects by putting out bird food. Plant some leafy bushes or small trees so the birds have places to hide in and feel secure. Shrubs with berries in winter are even better as they provide more winter food. Encourage hedgehogs by not being too tidy, leave some scrub and leaf litter under sheltered hedges and in dark corners for them. If you have a large garden, consider nesting boxes for birds (advice from the RSPB) and little kennels for hedgehogs to hibernate in. Nesting boxes and hedgehog boxes can be bought from: Jamie Wood Limited Birds, Cross Street, Polegate, East Sussex, BN26 6BN. Tel: 03212 3813. Leave some corners of the garden deliberately undisturbed for wildlife. Hedgehogs suffer in times of drought, put out a dish of water for them. Natural insect predators can be encouraged into the garden by having a variety of plants. Don't plant up large beds of the same crop; have small patches interspersed with bright flowering plants like marigolds. This not only attracts insect predators, but makes it harder for the pests to spread rapidly if one patch of crop does get infected. Phacelia is said to be a magnet for hoverflies and hoverflies prey on aphids. Ladybirds are your friends! Avoid disturbance of hedge bottoms where they lie up in winter. Common predatory insects are ladybirds, blue bottles and green bottles, lacewings. Natural predators for various pests can be purchased if you don't have them in the garden already. Look for biological controls in gardening magazine small ads. Do learn to identify the larvae of beneficial insects as they may look very different from the adults. For example, the black, caterpillar-like larvae of ladybirds may often be mistaken for pests! Practice crop rotation. Try physical barriers against pests, for example, a fence of polythene sheeting around carrot plants stops carrot flies from getting in. Tight fitting discs of felt or old carpet around brassicas discourages cabbage root fly. You can now buy horticultural fleece, a material which lets in light and rain but keeps out flying insects looking for a place to lay eggs. Vegetable crops can be protected by stretching this fleece over wire or cane hoops to make a tent over the plot. Plastic plant pots, lined with newspaper and balanced upside down on the top of garden canes will trap earwigs and vine weevils, which can then be physically carried away from the garden. Larger pests like caterpillars can also be picked off by hand and carried away. Pests like greenfly can be washed off plants with a medium to high pressure hose. Plant resistant varieties. Plants that are in good health have a better resistance to pests so always make sure you provide the optimum growing conditions for any particular variety take care with things like soil pH, light, drainage, exposure to winds etc. The use of home-made compost strengthens plants and increases resistance to pests. Liming discourages brassica club root. Coversely, don't plant varieties that you know from experience don't do well in your garden. You should be aware that derris and pyrethrum, the pesticides allowed in organic horticulture, are not particularly selective and may kill beneficial insects like ladybirds, bees and butterflies. They are also poisonous to fish if they get into a pond or stream. Chemical pesticides, on the contrary, may be highly selective indeed though of course, you have to remember they may have been tested on animals. So please think very carefully before you spray anything, ask yourself is it really necessary, try other methods of pest control first and if you feel spraying is absolutely imperative, make sure you are using the right one for the job. If you absolutely must spray, do it at dusk when bees, butterflies etc are not active to minimise any chance of hurting them. Don't be in too much of a hurry to spray, pests initially increase at a faster rate than their natural predators, but often if you wait, the predators will catch up and do the job for you. Slugs are a nuisance but most commercial slug killers contain the very poisonous metaldehyde. This kills off beneficial soil animals as well as slugs, is dangerous to pets, hedgehogs etc and the poisoned bodies of the slugs may get eaten by birds who are poisoned in turn. If you don't want to kill slugs, you can protect susceptible plants with a physical barrier like soot, sharp gravel or sand (slugs don't like irritants on their delicate undersurfaces!). If you are lucky, this sometimes works. Or you can trap slugs alive by putting out half orange skins, or sinking pots into the soil with some bait inside, then physically take them away from your garden. Gardening Which, in one of its trials, found that the beer trap, so beloved of organic gardeners, actually killed more beneficial creatures than slugs! So they advised you to drink all your beer and cut 4 inch deep rings from the plastic bottles to make slug barriers for individual plants. These need to be buried at least 1 cm deep in the soil, but proved very effective at keeping slugs out until the plants have grown enough to be able to withstand a little slug damage. By the way, it is the little grey and white slugs that damage plants, the big black and brown ones are useful scavengers! There is compound called Nobble which acts as a kind of slug birth control by destroying the eggs in the soil, which presumably is less cruel than poisoning adults. If ants are getting into your kitchen from the garden, try to find the point of entry and place a line of red chilli pepper, paprika and/or dried peppermint there to deter them. Washing kitchen surfaces with equal parts vinegar and water is also said to work. Wasps get a bad press but actually they are not vicious, they don't sting unless provoked so don't panic and wave your arms about when one appears. Keep them out of the house with net cutains at windows and a bead curtain at the kitchen door. Wasps feed their young on other insects and do a good job of keeping down pests in the garden. Mammals can sometimes cause damage to gardens. Cats can be deterred by placing stems of pruned roses around the base of plants. Old lemonade bottles or jam jars half full of water and left in strategic points around the garden can also help persuade cats to go elsewhere! Moles are said to dislike vibrations and sticking children's plastic windmills in their runs may persuade them to go next door! The same effect can also be produced by sinking bottles into their runs so the wind blowing over the open top makes a noise. It is said mice can be deterred by companion planting with spurge (Euphorbia lactea or Euphorbia lathyrus or Caper Spurge). It should be sown around the garden, one plant every six metres. I've also heard that mice don't like getting their feet dirty and a ring of soot around seedlings will keep them away but that might just be an old wive's tale! WEED CONTROL The organic movement is right to discourage the use of all herbicides. Weeds can nearly always be controlled effectively by other means. In a vegetable plot, hoe between the rows regularly to keep weed seedlings from taking root. Or use a mulch of black polythene, newspaper, leaf mould etc to help suppress weed growth. In the ornamental garden you can again use mulch, composted bark or gravel looks attractive, or you can underplant your shrubs etc with ground cover plants so there's no space left for weeds. This means some weeding for the first few years, but once the ground cover is established, the weeds get smothered. Suitable ground cover plants include: vinca, epimedium, lamiums, saxifragas, heathers, sedums, etc. If you have stubborn perennial weeds like thistles, cut them down two or three times during the summer and in particular, just before they flower. This not only prevents them from setting seed, it also uses up their food reserves and weakens them, so eventually they die out. Some recent German research suggests that many weed seeds need only a short flash of light to trigger germination and they postulate that working the ground at night, without any artificial light either, could reduce the germination of weeds considerably! However, there is a risk that eventually there would be a build-up of species that can germinate in complete darkness. ENDANGERED SPECIES Do be careful when buying bulbs. Over the last few years it has become fashionable to grow the species of various kinds of crocus, dwarf iris, tulip, daffodil, snowdrop etc. Often these are gathered from the wild in vast quantities, so much so that they are becoming endangered species in the wild. Please don't encourage this trade, always check that your bulbs come from a reputable supplier and are nursery propagated. (Van Tubergen and Thompson & Morgan guarantee this). If in doubt, don't buy the species, buy a named variety because then you can be sure it has been nursery bred. Needless to say, you should never gather seeds, bulbs or rooted plants from the wild yourself as this could cause irreparable damage to environments. If you want to plant a wild flower garden, it is possible to get seeds and bulbs grown in cultivation by reputable dealers. If you like flower arranging, be careful when buying dried everlasting flower heads at Garden centres, make sure they come from cultivated sources and are not picked from the wild, especially the more exotic kinds. Several species prized for their beauty as dried heads are on the endangered list! Also, do think several times before buying stone for rockeries, paving etc. All over Britain valuable wildlife habitats are being destroyed by quarrying. Think twice before having a bonfire, it adds to the greenhouse effect, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But if you must have a bonfire, before lighting it, do check that no small animals have crawled into it. A bonfire makes a very inviting bedroom for a hedgehog, for example. FURTHER INFORMATION Peatlands Campaign, RSNC, 22 The Green, Nettleham, Lincoln. Alternatives to Peat (leaflet), Henry Doubelday Research Association, National Centre for Organic Gardening, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry, CV8 3LG. Fertiliser Manufacturers Association, Greenhill House, Thorpe Wood, Peterborough, PE3 6GF. Successful Organic Pest Control by Trevor Forsythe/Thorsons has a good chapter about attracting natural predators into your garden. Practical Alternatives, Victoria House, Bridge Street, Rhyader, Powys, LD6 5AG. Tel: 0597 810929. Composting Domestic Sewage. 80p. Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Powys, SY20 9AZ. Tel: 0654 702400. ___________________________________ // This article is copyright to the Vegetarian Society (UK), but may be freely copied for non-commercial use provided it is kept intact, not altered and these lines are included. For futher information contact: The Vegetarian Society, Parkdale, Dunham Road, Altrincham, Cheshire WA14 4QG, England. Tel: (England) 061 928 0793 email: vegsoc@vegsoc.demon.co.uk // [The text of this file was obtained from the Vegetarian Society (UK) in March 1995.]