Reply To: Manure Trials

[Marcus Offer]

This does seem to me to be relevant to the points I made on 9th June 2016 under Preparing the Ground>organic Standards, about certification and the value of it. I got no responses to that post but the issue it raises seems to me to cross check with this one. Finding compost that is free of antibiotics, aminopyralids, herbicides etc is pretty central to the no-dig method, it seems to me, but the key problem for me so far is getting stuff that isn’t hugely expensive (e.g. Organic Cow Compost from Earth Cycle – best bought in bulk bags) but is what it says on the tin: i.e. “organic” has to mean something precise, therefore we need precise standards such as the Soil Association etc, and although the cost of certification to the small producer is high, some such scheme is our only guarantee of defined quality. Of course “Biodynamic” or something similar could be used – but any term has to have precise meaning and that implies a scheme some kind, and some form of policing…. Too often these days “organic” is used to mean “not from artificially produced materials” and nothing more precise. What those materials were grown in, or might have had added to them, is anybody’s guess…. All credit to Plantmark for such a thorough investigation of the issue!