Re: Jessesmom, anyone, about eating directly from the garden...

Well, Fledgling--I didn't used to give it much thought-- until I read that roundworm eggs can live in the soil for years, and who knows what all else survives-but it's been a normal thing for generations to put cow manure on the garden.

My step-daughter was telling about a boy that was in the hospital two different times last summer--one was when he was eating out of his parent's garden..and again about a month later when he came to visit his grandparents, and was eating directly out of their garden...E. coli, yes, both garden's had manure on them and he was just eating the vegetables straight out of the garden, maybe rinsing them with the garden hose.

I was actually going to ask what people do use to wash their garden vegetables with, because yes, I am more cautious now. I've heard grapefruit seed extract- what else? I used to just put salt in the water and it would run any "bugs" out of the vegetables, but I don't think that would be enough to kill eggs?

I don't have slugs here--thankfully, it's a high desert climate, dry. I know that was a concern to others that had gardens in areas with lots of slugs--I had them where I used to live, and didn't have a clue about flukes affecting humans until I started killing them myself (12 years after moving from there).

And interesting thing about the microbials...my husband put a product with microbial "kingdoms" in it on the fields to experiment this spring, our soil is highly alkaline, and tough to get stuff to produce when farming it. Water doesn't go into it, it runs off. The roots can't grow very deep because it gets so hard. What a difference the microbes have made in production in the hay he has just been cutting. I didn't clean up my corn stalks after the garden was done last year, and I was able to get bundles of newpapers from the newpaper place that they were going to just throw away. I had read to lay newspapers between the rows to keep the weeds down, and hold the moisture in. At the end of the gardening year, my husband just disced everything up--and there were clumps of corn stalks and newspaper. We sprayed the microbes on the garden last Fall, and watered them in with the sprinkler as an experiment-and when he worked it up again this spring, the clumps of corn and newspaper that hasn't gotten broken down through the winter before- was all disintegrated- there were no signs of them.

Apparently, it's exactly like you were saying, the beneficial microbials work to loosen the soil up, and the water is able to penetrate better, and the roots are able to grow down so the plant is healthier.

We are now having other farmers experiment with it on half of their fields, but it's sure made a difference in ours--no fertilizers, (except for manure from having the cattle on it through the Fall and Winter) just the microbials. We also have cattle on pasture grasses, irrigated with large, pivot sprinklers. We put the microbials on the pastures before putting the cattle in there. The manure is getting broken down and you don't see "cow pies" all over the field. The farmer next to us is noticing too..he spent alot of money on fertilizers this spring, and our field next to his has produced more.

Would I worry about these "beneficial" microbials being on the food from the garden? I don't think so, should I be?

What about hydrogen peroxide in the cleansing water for vegetables?



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