Organic Weetabix (and other organic foodstuffs)

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I really am not an expert and hate the eco-fascism that sometimes surrounds the argument from the organic side. I have a small holding and grow organic veg and fruit here in Spain , I use no fertilisers other than goat shit, no pesticides either. I grow lemons, oranges, apricots, pomegranates,avocados, peppers, black berries, raspberries, figs, brassicas, and uncle tom cobbley and all. The meat comes from the neighbours sheep and the goats that graze up on our land where nothing grows but weeds and olives. The animals keep the fire risk down. I help kill a neighbour's pigs twice a year so that's where we get the pork from. The bloke down the lane sells us 10 eggs for about 2 euros every week or so. I won't eat factory farmed chicken after seeing the conditions they are reared in. As I understand it if we reduced out craving for beef then there would be a disproportionate amount of land released.
Organic boxes are usually supplied by small scale eco warriors and I don't believe they are responsive to market needs nor are they cheap.
I do think, believe, that the taste of organic is so much better than the stuff I used to buy in Tesco's. Take a tomato . And pesticide use - are they contact or residual?
The costs though and the hours I work and the water I use suggests, screams that I am doing this for no real benefit and I could save a fortune and a lot of backache and boredom (boredom eating my way through a glut, I must have 8 marrows at the minute and I can't even give them away and if I never have to eat swiss chard again after last year, happy days) that I could save all that bother if I just went to Aldi on the coast and just bought their organic range. I think for the ordinary consumer who is not strap cashed it's the tastiest and probably the healthiest option. But what do I know?
 
HerdnMulhall said:
I really am not an expert and hate the eco-fascism that sometimes surrounds the argument from the organic side. I have a small holding and grow organic veg and fruit here in Spain , I use no fertilisers other than goat shit, no pesticides either. I grow lemons, oranges, apricots, pomegranates,avocados, peppers, black berries, raspberries, figs, brassicas, and uncle tom cobbley and all. The meat comes from the neighbours sheep and the goats that graze up on our land where nothing grows but weeds and olives. The animals keep the fire risk down. I help kill a neighbour's pigs twice a year so that's where we get the pork from. The bloke down the lane sells us 10 eggs for about 2 euros every week or so. I won't eat factory farmed chicken after seeing the conditions they are reared in. As I understand it if we reduced out craving for beef then there would be a disproportionate amount of land released.
Organic boxes are usually supplied by small scale eco warriors and I don't believe they are responsive to market needs nor are they cheap.
I do think, believe, that the taste of organic is so much better than the stuff I used to buy in Tesco's. Take a tomato . And pesticide use - are they contact or residual?
The costs though and the hours I work and the water I use suggests, screams that I am doing this for no real benefit and I could save a fortune and a lot of backache and boredom (boredom eating my way through a glut, I must have 8 marrows at the minute and I can't even give them away and if I never have to eat swiss chard again after last year, happy days) that I could save all that bother if I just went to Aldi on the coast and just bought their organic range. I think for the ordinary consumer who is not strap cashed it's the tastiest and probably the healthiest option. But what do I know?
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I'm not one of these eco warrior types either. But there's no doubt in my mind, that a home grown carrot or whatever, fresh out the ground tastes far better than anything a supermarket has on their shelves.

Where in Spain are you? I always get my Fruit n Veg from the market, twice a week. I'm not under any illusions that its organic, but its cheap as chips, and cracking quality usually.
 
HerdnMulhall said:
I really am not an expert and hate the eco-fascism that sometimes surrounds the argument from the organic side. I have a small holding and grow organic veg and fruit here in Spain , I use no fertilisers other than goat shit, no pesticides either. I grow lemons, oranges, apricots, pomegranates,avocados, peppers, black berries, raspberries, figs, brassicas, and uncle tom cobbley and all. The meat comes from the neighbours sheep and the goats that graze up on our land where nothing grows but weeds and olives. The animals keep the fire risk down. I help kill a neighbour's pigs twice a year so that's where we get the pork from. The bloke down the lane sells us 10 eggs for about 2 euros every week or so. I won't eat factory farmed chicken after seeing the conditions they are reared in. As I understand it if we reduced out craving for beef then there would be a disproportionate amount of land released.
Organic boxes are usually supplied by small scale eco warriors and I don't believe they are responsive to market needs nor are they cheap.
I do think, believe, that the taste of organic is so much better than the stuff I used to buy in Tesco's. Take a tomato . And pesticide use - are they contact or residual?
The costs though and the hours I work and the water I use suggests, screams that I am doing this for no real benefit and I could save a fortune and a lot of backache and boredom (boredom eating my way through a glut, I must have 8 marrows at the minute and I can't even give them away and if I never have to eat swiss chard again after last year, happy days) that I could save all that bother if I just went to Aldi on the coast and just bought their organic range. I think for the ordinary consumer who is not strap cashed it's the tastiest and probably the healthiest option. But what do I know?
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I don't think there is any substantial taste difference

What you notice growing yourself is the freshness of the produce.

From picking to eating the same day.
 
Epping said:
I don't think there is any substantial taste difference

What you notice growing yourself is the freshness of the produce.

From picking to eating the same day.
Click to expand...

Definitely with things that start to degrade quickly like lettuce leaves (whole lettuce is not that bad). I was getting annoyed with paying £1.50 for a bag of mixed leaves which tasted ok on the first day but after 3-4 days you had soggy leaves and some turning brown where they had stuck themselves to the plastic bag. For about £40, I made myself a veg trug to have just outside the back door, where I just grow a range of different salad leaves. Each morning, I pick, wash, rinse and put straight into my sarnies for work. With seeds only costing a few quid, I reckon I made my money back in just the first year.
 
DaveH said:
Definitely with things that start to degrade quickly like lettuce leaves (whole lettuce is not that bad). I was getting annoyed with paying £1.50 for a bag of mixed leaves which tasted ok on the first day but after 3-4 days you had soggy leaves and some turning brown where they had stuck themselves to the plastic bag. For about £40, I made myself a veg trug to have just outside the back door, where I just grow a range of different salad leaves. Each morning, I pick, wash, rinse and put straight into my sarnies for work. With seeds only costing a few quid, I reckon I made my money back in just the first year.
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I've got a pallet planter which I've stuck tumbkling tomatoes in and mainly flowers

must be over 100 tom's already with hundreds of flowers... next year I'm doing a salad one like this

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Typhoonftm said:
Where in Spain are you? I always get my Fruit n Veg from the market, twice a week. I'm not under any illusions that its organic, but its cheap as chips, and cracking quality usually.
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I live up in the mountains and down a dirt track about 30 miles inland north west of Estepona. Which is very a different world from the Costa despite the proximity. Do you know this area? There's Brit immigrants aaround and we have all Spanish neighbours who frankly have been so generous to us. All but one are cracking souls.
When I lived in England like you I generally topped up like you at the local market.
 
HerdnMulhall said:
I live up in the mountains and down a dirt track about 30 miles inland north west of Estepona. Which is very a different world from the Costa despite the proximity. Do you know this area? There's Brit immigrants aaround and we have all Spanish neighbours who frankly have been so generous to us. All but one are cracking souls.
When I lived in England like you I generally topped up like you at the local market.
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Not really mate. Drove through once or twice. I'm about a 5 hour drive north in Costa Calida.
 
Imagine not being concerned about the long term effects of ingesting things like glyphosphate, fertilisers and seeing the lands turn barren through over use. Imagine not being dubious about the run offs into our rivers and seas of industrial agriculture.
 
mux said:
Currently eating a bowl of this. It tastes the same if not slightly poorer quality than normal Weetabix.

Does anyone actually buy the organic alternatives to stuff? If so why?

Also please someone educate me on why this is even a thing. I mean, surely Weetabix are organic by their very nature?!
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Get your boyfriend to make you a bacon sandwich ffs
 
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DaveH said:
Or another way to look at it is, organic farming produces lower crop yields but the human population is growing. The more organic stuff we eat, the more land we need for farming. The more land we need for farming, the more trees and hedgerows we need to cut down. As they reduce, biodiversity reduces and carbon dioxide levels go up, which warms the planet, sea levels rise and available land is reduced further.

If anything, providing it is safe for human consumption, we need to be producing as higher yield crops as we can by any method we can use. The only other two options are, hit a world wide crisis very quickly or find someway of dealing with the worldwide population increase. It is frightening to think that at the end of WW1 the global population was 2 billion. It is now 7 billion.
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Agree with a lot of this, but there are also exceptional innovations taking place, globally, with businesses producing leafy greens in warehouses that have minimal impact on waste and water supply streams. My big concern regarding HYV isn't really health, it is the way that Mon$@^&o (who dare not be named) take over the food supply industry, scary shite that.

Arkle said:
Yep, and pastoral farming takes up far more land per unit of food than arable farming.
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The future of protein is in insects, sure to get a buzz burger in the future.
 
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DaveH said:
I might look at doing that. I have a patio which has the side wall of the house on one side and the fence on the other, with a plain concrete base. It has a nice mix of sun and shelter, but is probably the dullest part of the garden.
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someone mentioned and I had a decent pallet hanging around.

just stapled some plastic to the back of it then filled it with compost. have to be careful watering it at first cos it just flushes bloody compost out. might be worth plating laid down for a week or two and then once roots established stand it up.

the tomatoes I have in it are doing the best I've ever had. I'm expecting an exceptional crop
 
Epping said:
I don't think there is any substantial taste difference

What you notice growing yourself is the freshness of the produce.

From picking to eating the same day.
Click to expand...
Agree, taste doesn't originate from the way a cop is grown, it is dependent on the genetics of the plant being grown. We're very lucky with our clime over here and can grow a lot of fruit and veg. When I first started I just bought packets of seed from the equivalent of B&Q, and while they tasted alright and I got a lot of satisfaction from the process, the stuff didn't taste better. Certainly, not like the tomatoes me granda used to grow in Pensher. Then I did a little research about heirloom varieties, which take a little longer to mature and don't crop all together. Since then almost everything we set-away is heirloom seed. Still get good tasty crops but to all at once and they taste 'proper', not just watery fruit and veg.

Nee idea how to post pics, otherwise I'd hoy up a pic of the patch
 
Sunderland Surfer said:
Agree, taste doesn't originate from the way a cop is grown, it is dependent on the genetics of the plant being grown. We're very lucky with our clime over here and can grow a lot of fruit and veg. When I first started I just bought packets of seed from the equivalent of B&Q, and while they tasted alright and I got a lot of satisfaction from the process, the stuff didn't taste better. Certainly, not like the tomatoes me granda used to grow in Pensher. Then I did a little research about heirloom varieties, which take a little longer to mature and don't crop all together. Since then almost everything we set-away is heirloom seed. Still get good tasty crops but to all at once and they taste 'proper', not just watery fruit and veg.

Nee idea how to post pics, otherwise I'd hoy up a pic of the patch
Click to expand...

for toms get away from Moneymaker and a couple fo the others... some great varieties out there
 
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