Today 
Tomorrow
RSSGardeners' musings
Garden sheds - pesticides of the past
Posted by: James Alexander-Sinclair, 08 April 2008, 10.18AM
What's in your shed? If it's anything like mine it will contain some (or all) of the following: tools (some hanging from nails, some lying around on the floor), mowers, plant pots, deckchairs waiting for a sunny day, three bicycles with flat tyres, some cannas, bamboo canes, most of a fruit cage, various rodents, many spiders and assorted half-empty paint pots. Bit of a mess, really - especially when compared to Adam's shed.
What it doesn't contain is much in the way of chemicals. I'm not strictly organic as I do have glyphosate (for paths and serious weeds) and a miraculous weedkiller that kills nettles and thistles while leaving grass unscathed - but that's about it. I find pesticides pretty unnecessary as I have only two insect problems: woolly aphids on my pyracanthas, which are dealt with by a strong jet of water, and stripy mullein caterpillars on verbascum, which are easy to pick off.
I mention all this because I came across a very ancient shed the other day with many of the original contents. Most of them were just older versions of what we use today - small terracotta pots and wooden seed trays where we have plastic - but there were a couple of surprises. There was an (empty) bottle of liquid nicotine, which was declared illegal for garden use in the 1970s. Liquid nicotine is extremely dangerous to all living creatures and was used widely as an insecticide for many, many years. It was either mixed with water as a spray or else vaporised in lamps - in which case the gardener lit the lamp and got the hell out of the greenhouse as quickly as possible. Everything left in the place - aphids, lacewings, ladybirds and, probably, rats - was toast.
I also found a box of arsenate of lead. This is another ancient insecticide that you are unlikely to find on the shelves of your local garden centre. It was the chemical used in the first aerial crop dusting experiment in 1921, when it was used to control caterpillars on catalpa trees (crop dusting was dramatised in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, when Cary Grant was pursued by a menacing yellow aeroplane). In Britain, arsenate of lead was mostly used to control codling moths on fruit trees, although it was doubtless very tempting to any gardeners stricken with homicidal yearnings.
Chemicals like these were an accepted, everyday part of the gardener's arsenal. It's interesting how quickly we've turned away from noxious chemicals and how quickly the organic way has been adopted by gardeners. I know that purists will say that being partly organic is as impossible as being half-pregnant but I always think that every little bit helps.
Comments
Glen
09 March 2008, 11.04AM
gail
20 April 2008, 05.00PM
Mo Bentley
27 April 2008, 12.05PM
Thank you for your comment
Thank you for your comments. All comments will be looked at by a moderator, however, due to the numbers of comments we receive, we can't promise that all will be posted on the site.