drainey0
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Normal banan peels vs organic peels for organic garden

What's your guys take on using organic vs non organic banana peels in the garden as fertilizer?

AnnaIkona
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I mostly grow my own bananas, so mine are organic and I love adding them to compost. I know someone who adds store-bought banana peals to their compost/soil and the peals are probably not organic, but they don't mind that.

I wouldn't add store-bought banana peals to my soil or compost, beacuse they were sprayed.

imafan26
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Most bananas here are grown without pesticides. Mainly because bananas are extremely sensitive and quite easy to kill with pesticides. The organic ones don't use synthetic fertilizers. Our bananas are not sprayed for the same reason.

tomc
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If the thresh hold for your garden is nothing not of known organic provinance, I fear your not ever going to garden. This would exclude egg shells most meat and sea-food by-product. (IE blood or bone meal).

I would look on organic waste as a goal with material of your own production being the only source you know. Look at this as a goal and not a starting place.

imafan26
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There are organic bananas, but I agree with Tom, it is hard to avoid non-organic stuff. Even the NOP standards acknowledge that and have allowed synthetics on their lists. If you use organic fertilizers like fish meal, bone meal, blood meal, feather meal and composts, there are probably something synthetic that went in them. Fish food for farmed fish is not organic, but allowed because there is no practical substitute. Even if you eat a wild caught salmon, those fish are now swimming in polluted waters. Look at all the tuna with high levels of mecury.

90% of the corn, soybeans, canola, and wheat are gmo. And most of the corn is grown as animal feed for cattle, pigs, and chickens. It is hard to avoid synthetically grown products at the store. It is in everything from cereal and bread, to meatloaf, and tomatoes.

As to bone meal, blood meal and other animal by products, I try to avoid them. Rendering plants are not sent food grade animals, they get the old, the sick and the left overs.

Mad cow disease that was diagnosed in humans as Creutzfeldt Jacobson disease is a prion disease and the people with the highest risk were those who ate organ meats and vegetarian farmers who used and probably inhaled bone meal made from animals that were fed sheep brains. The risk is very low and no one is legally allowed to feed sheep brains or even bone meal to ruminents anymore, but the disease does occur naturally but takes years (over 10) to show up, that is why it usually shows up in dairy cattle who are usually sent to rendering plants not meat packers. The disease is usually not diagnosed until it is in its later stages and is 100% fatal.

BTW while it is not allowed to feed brain and spinal chords to ruminants, they are still allowed to feed it to other animals like pigs. Pigs are usually slaughtered when they are only a few months old, so they do not get the disease.

toxcrusadr
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Personally I think the value of diverting kitchen scraps from the landfill outweighs any cost (risk) from pesticide residues on the material. It certainly doesn't harm the garden itself in any measurable way as far as I know. The composting process does break down these compounds, and the vast majority of them degrade fairly rapidly in the environment anyway. The few that don't - such as persistent herbicides used on pastures - are not going to show up in your kitchen scraps to begin with. There are multiple dilution and uptake steps going from compost inputs to soil to plant and back to your table, so IMHO the risk of ingesting pesticides this way is nil.

While I don't eat - or garden - fully Organically, I definitely try to reduce the use of chemicals to a bare minimum, just so you know where I'm coming from. My motto is, "I don't eat the compost anyway." :-]

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applestar
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It's a funny kind of question in a way, because we EAT the peels of many of the organic fruits and vegetables (not banana peels, of course.:wink: ) Not organic ones are not to be eaten, and they are --- put in the compost to process down and basically detox. :mrgreen:

j3707
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Location: Pacific Northwest, Zone 8, 48" annual rainfall, dry summers.

I mostly grow my own bananas,

In BC? Sounds like an interesting story for another thread....if I haven't already missed it 8)

Mr green
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applestar wrote:It's a funny kind of question in a way, because we EAT the peels of many of the organic fruits and vegetables (not banana peels, of course.:wink: ) Not organic ones are not to be eaten, and they are --- put in the compost to process down and basically detox. :mrgreen:
Here in Sweden we have two trashbins (optional) One for burnable trash that doesnt fit in recycling. And one for compost, everything non organic I throw in there, it will go to become biogas. My compost creatures will only get the best! O:)

They may be grown without pesticides but they dip them in some toxic junk after they harvest them to make them store longer atleast the ones they ship over here, or did they stop doing that?



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