May 17, 2010
MANN TALK: Potato Control: From Wood Ashes to Monsanto
By Perry Mann
The potato has been in my life since I can remember. It was often a main dish. It was fried in lard or bacon grease or mashed with butter and milk then whipped into a consistency that was a joy to the palate. The French fried potato came late into my life but became a favorite after its introduction. Now that I have read “Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan, I will shy away from French fries.
My introduction to potato cultivation began as a child on my grandfather’s farm. The garden always had a large area for potatoes. It was seeded with potatoes from the previous year’s crop, which were cut into pieces with an eye in each piece. Three or four of them were dropped into a furrow six inches deep and hilled about a foot apart. In a fortnight they would break the ground and soon the green leaf of the potato would appear. It was then that the battle between gardener and the Colorado beetles began.
The beetles would come from the ground having entered the ground the year before as a wormlike larva after feasting on potato leaves. The beetles were male and female. The male would mount the female and fertilizes her eggs and she would lay the eggs on the under side of the potato leaf in clusters, resembling yellow pinheads in a huddle. From those eggs would hatch larvae, voracious things that could decimate a leaf overnight.
Chemical insecticides were unknown to my grandparents. So they improvised. As well as I can recall, my grandmother would bring a bucket of wood ashes and dust the potatoes to inhibit the larvae. It must have worked because there were always potatoes on the table cooked in one way or another in every season.
By the time that I began to garden on my own, there was an insecticide that took care of the larvae. One dusting and the larvae would sicken and drop off. But after a few years, it was obvious that the larvae had developed an immunity to the insecticide and finally it was obvious that the insecticide had no effect whatsoever. So it became necessary in order to have potatoes to devise a means without an insecticide to defeat the beetles and their larvae. The means were simple.
I plant the potatoes early so that they can get a start before the beetles emerge from the ground. Potatoes thrive in cool weather but beetles stay in the ground until it gets warm. Thus, the potatoes have a chance to grow before being attacked.
After the beetles come, I monitor the plants and collect the beetles, sometime captured in a coital union, and crush them. After the larvae come and they always do regardless of how close I monitor, I, armed with a large bucket and hand spade, knock the larvae off the vines with the spade into the bucket, then empty the bucket on the ground and destroy them. It’s a battle, but I have won every season for a number of years. My potatoes have no chemicals except a small amount of fertilizer between hills.
But chemicals are the story of the cultivation of commercial potatoes, particularly those used by fast food places to produce French fries. In Pollan’s book, he describes being “walked through a season’s regimen, the state of the art in the control of a potato field” in Idaho.
1. In early spring it begins with dousing the soil with a fumigant, a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil.
2. Next there is applied an herbicide to clean his fields of all weeds.
3. At planting there is applied a systemic insecticide to protect seedlings and kill any insects. And there is applied a second herbicide when the seedlings are six inches tall.
4. The crop receives ten weekly sprayings of chemical fertilizer.
5. When the leaves of one row touches the leaves of another, there is applied a fungicide to control late blight, the same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine.
6. Then a crop duster will spray, with the most toxic chemical in use, for aphids that are harmless but cause a brown spot on the potatoes’ flesh, which causes fast food places to reject them. The chemical is so toxic that the farmer who uses it will not go into the field for days because it is known to damage the human nervous system. The farmer admits that he plants a small garden of organic potatoes for home use rather than eat what he produces for sale.
But Monsanto has engineered a genetically altered potato plant in which a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, a known killer of the Colorado beetle, has been introduced into the DNA of the potato. It works. The larvae come, but a bite of potato leaf is lethal to them. So farmers can now avoid the use of some chemicals and buy seed potatoes from Monsanto, which has a patent. Pay Monsanto or use chemicals or go organic.
I am happy to relate that I have not bought a commercially grown potato in memory. I have grown my own year after year. Also, I am happy now to tell that I rarely eat out and even more rarely eat at fast food places. But non-gardeners must choose now to buy organic grown potatoes, chemically grown potatoes or genetically altered potatoes. That is, if they can with assurance choose one or the others.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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MANN TALK: Potato Control: From Wood Ashes to Monsanto
By Perry Mann
The potato has been in my life since I can remember. It was often a main dish. It was fried in lard or bacon grease or mashed with butter and milk then whipped into a consistency that was a joy to the palate. The French fried potato came late into my life but became a favorite after its introduction. Now that I have read “Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan, I will shy away from French fries.
My introduction to potato cultivation began as a child on my grandfather’s farm. The garden always had a large area for potatoes. It was seeded with potatoes from the previous year’s crop, which were cut into pieces with an eye in each piece. Three or four of them were dropped into a furrow six inches deep and hilled about a foot apart. In a fortnight they would break the ground and soon the green leaf of the potato would appear. It was then that the battle between gardener and the Colorado beetles began.
The beetles would come from the ground having entered the ground the year before as a wormlike larva after feasting on potato leaves. The beetles were male and female. The male would mount the female and fertilizes her eggs and she would lay the eggs on the under side of the potato leaf in clusters, resembling yellow pinheads in a huddle. From those eggs would hatch larvae, voracious things that could decimate a leaf overnight.
Chemical insecticides were unknown to my grandparents. So they improvised. As well as I can recall, my grandmother would bring a bucket of wood ashes and dust the potatoes to inhibit the larvae. It must have worked because there were always potatoes on the table cooked in one way or another in every season.
By the time that I began to garden on my own, there was an insecticide that took care of the larvae. One dusting and the larvae would sicken and drop off. But after a few years, it was obvious that the larvae had developed an immunity to the insecticide and finally it was obvious that the insecticide had no effect whatsoever. So it became necessary in order to have potatoes to devise a means without an insecticide to defeat the beetles and their larvae. The means were simple.
I plant the potatoes early so that they can get a start before the beetles emerge from the ground. Potatoes thrive in cool weather but beetles stay in the ground until it gets warm. Thus, the potatoes have a chance to grow before being attacked.
After the beetles come, I monitor the plants and collect the beetles, sometime captured in a coital union, and crush them. After the larvae come and they always do regardless of how close I monitor, I, armed with a large bucket and hand spade, knock the larvae off the vines with the spade into the bucket, then empty the bucket on the ground and destroy them. It’s a battle, but I have won every season for a number of years. My potatoes have no chemicals except a small amount of fertilizer between hills.
But chemicals are the story of the cultivation of commercial potatoes, particularly those used by fast food places to produce French fries. In Pollan’s book, he describes being “walked through a season’s regimen, the state of the art in the control of a potato field” in Idaho.
1. In early spring it begins with dousing the soil with a fumigant, a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil.
2. Next there is applied an herbicide to clean his fields of all weeds.
3. At planting there is applied a systemic insecticide to protect seedlings and kill any insects. And there is applied a second herbicide when the seedlings are six inches tall.
4. The crop receives ten weekly sprayings of chemical fertilizer.
5. When the leaves of one row touches the leaves of another, there is applied a fungicide to control late blight, the same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine.
6. Then a crop duster will spray, with the most toxic chemical in use, for aphids that are harmless but cause a brown spot on the potatoes’ flesh, which causes fast food places to reject them. The chemical is so toxic that the farmer who uses it will not go into the field for days because it is known to damage the human nervous system. The farmer admits that he plants a small garden of organic potatoes for home use rather than eat what he produces for sale.
But Monsanto has engineered a genetically altered potato plant in which a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, a known killer of the Colorado beetle, has been introduced into the DNA of the potato. It works. The larvae come, but a bite of potato leaf is lethal to them. So farmers can now avoid the use of some chemicals and buy seed potatoes from Monsanto, which has a patent. Pay Monsanto or use chemicals or go organic.
I am happy to relate that I have not bought a commercially grown potato in memory. I have grown my own year after year. Also, I am happy now to tell that I rarely eat out and even more rarely eat at fast food places. But non-gardeners must choose now to buy organic grown potatoes, chemically grown potatoes or genetically altered potatoes. That is, if they can with assurance choose one or the others.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
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