How evidence-based growing beats relying on old

wives’ tales.

By Constance Casey

Confronted with huge, uncontrollable forces, we tend to fall back on magical thinking. Say a goat was sacrificed on the volcano rim last year and lava did not engulf the village. It must follow that this year some poor goat is doomed.

To garden is to encounter forces of nature less threatening than molten lava but still bewildering. Weird weather, chewing insects, trees mysteriously dying-these can make a gardener as superstitious as the villagers.

Perhaps every April, your great-aunt Sophie poured beer on the earth around her lilacs, and in May the flowers bloomed profusely. Your family may acknowledge that a belief in beer as flower-inducer is inconsistent with the known laws of science, and yet they will follow the custom, open the bottles, and pour on the brew.

With a similar vulnerability to irrational arguments, we, too, eagerly buy pesticides and fertilizers that we probably don’t need, and that may not work, from marketers pushing fast cures for bug damage or underperforming trees.

Enlightenment is available…

Find the full article Posted Friday, Nov. 28, 2008 on Slate.com

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