My grandfather used to spray pesticide all over his garden for over half a century, and he never had any non-smoking related health complications. Of course, he also used to make me pour used motor oil on ant hills as a child, so he wasn't the best environmentalist around. However, I digress. The point is, pesticides aren't the end of the world, and buying things "organic" doesn't necessarily mean a better product (although I gave no evidence to support that second part).

A mixture of 2 tablespoons dish soap and a gallon of water poured into a spray bottle will kill off most soft bodied insects in your garden.
You can also just spray them off with a blast from your water hose.
In big production farming, pesticides do have their place, but you don't have to use them in your back yard garden.
I have never and never will.

my mom has grown a garden every year since I was 6. She has never EVER used any sort of chemicals or pesticides yet every year she grows huge tomatoes and other tasty veggies. her secret? she pulls weeds the second she sees them and waters them every day (sometimes she misses a day, but not often) she uses other tricks too (like making a newspaper grid around her onions to make it hard for weeds to grow and keeps the onions in place) and her gardens always seem fine. pesticides in home gardens are just another sign of how lazy people in America are getting...

i have an organic garden. my kid is never gonna eat poison.

@Swizzler121: Um, it takes about as much effort to treat a decent-sized garden with pesticides as it does to weed it. Are you calling my grandpa lazy, punk?

My grandma did the dish soap thing too. She'd pour her dirty dishwater on her flowers to get rid of bugs.

@JohnDeere: Your kid will probabaly eat poison, smoke poison (or second hand smoke), drink poison, etc. Its inevitable.

@start-as-you-mean-to-go-on:

Organic doesn't mean the food tastes better and I don't think people claim that. But to imply that pesticides are safe because your grandpa didn't die by them isn't really saying much. There are people that tried to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head and they came out of it with a scratch. That doesn't mean bullets can't kill you.

Dish soap + water gets rid of earwigs and most other buggies in the soil, cayenne and black pepper keep away rabbits and chipmunks, as do marigolds planted around the border of your veggie garden (their smell is a deterrent).

There are lots of videos online about keeping a natural garden. It's usually much cheaper (for me anyway) to use these methods instead of buying pesticide at the hardware store. I always end up with more tomatoes and green beans than I could ever eat.

For a home garden the ONLY time you should be applying pesticides is when you have something wiping out your crop. A 5-15% loss (random numbers) is not something to worry about on the home scale. Now when you wake up one morning and there are (bad) insects covering your garden, THEN you whip out the pesticides.

Hmmm a cheap way to protect your garden from pests?

I know! Grow some plants in it!

@ Swizzler121: Pesticides kill bugs, herbicides kill weeds. Weeding won't prevent bugs.

The thought of it being organic made her "shudder?" I think most backyard gardens are organic, crazy over-reacting Janet. What's wrong with a pesticide-free little garden?

@WiglyWorm: Oh, companion plants too.

@WiglyWorm: You could also totally look into some beneficial weeds while you were at it.

@JohnDeere: seriously... even water is poison if you drink enough of it.

And he's probably been breathing poison since day 1.

I live in the insect capital of the world, and I don't typically have insect problems in my garden. The only pest problems I had last year were doves and blue jays pecking holes in my tomatoes, for which I covered the plants in netting. My secret is lots of home made compost for good plant health, as well as planting varieties that like our climate.

@blue_streak: that's what the daily watering is for. and when she's weeding she looks for bugs and such.

So yeah, there's plenty of ways to do it cheaply, easily, and effectively. Farmers have been doing this for thousands of years and I don't think humans did all that badly for themselves.

More than health, I think it's important to note that chemicals aren't conducive to a healthy ecosystem. They don't stay in your garden; they percolate into other areas, too, and eventually can make it back into streams and rivers where the water intake for water treatment plants) is.

@Crabby Cakes: Because when the president does it, he sets an example. An example which is potentially bad for their business.

Honestly, they'd have been better suited by not calling any attention to it at all.

I'm not surprised. Some group wants the Obamas to "get rid" of their dog because it isn't a dog from a rescue dog organization.

@TerribleDecade: Which would make perfect sense. Since your dog isn't a rescued dog (which is infeasible anyway since his daughter has allergies), put him in a shelter which will eventually euthanize him.

I find the letter a bit humorous. Someone with a vested interest in people slowly poisoning themselves and the environment is freaked out because the White House is setting an example they are ill equipped to counter.

My mom always had a kitchen garden even when we lived in a large city. I don't remember her ever using anything on the garden besides water. Natural options are cheaper and usually don't require a run to the store. The closest I have come to using a chemical on our garden was cig butts soaked in a gallon jug of water and sprayed it on to get rid of a pest infestation.

Trying to put fear into people for not using chemicals is pretty silly.

@Erin Cummins: I'd plant veggies just to attract rabbits and chipmunks.

With all the crap that attacks DC area gardens, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some pesticides get used.

@JohnDeere: Unless he trick or treats in my neighborhood.

Muah-hahaha!

Just kidding :)

@Erin Cummins: We've used soap and water as well as cayenne with good results too.

Lots of good tips here: [ezinearticles.com]

Absolutely cheaper, and we usually have all of this stuff around anyway. A few large spray bottles of cayenne, water, soap, garlic and onion got us through last summer.

@WiglyWorm: Well said, took the words right out of my ... ummm, typing fingers?

I wonder if the Obamas had a vegetable garden at their home in Chicago, or if this is something to make people say, "See, they're not elites, they're just like us!"

@HappyCthulhu: The soap in water trick (also sold commercially as insecticidal soap) doesn't kill all or exclusively soft bodied insects. It kills "most" insects which eat your plant (either hard of soft bodied) as they ingest the soap while eating the plant. Most insects don't have the capabilities to vomit and thus get sick and fall off the plant where they generally die of starvation or natural predators.

The caveat is that they still have to take bites of your plants before it works.

@bohemian: DO NOT TREAT YOUR TOMATOS WITH ANYTHING THAT IS MADE WITH TOBACCO!!!!!, like your cig butt mix.

You can spread the tobacco mosaic virus to your tomatos.
In fact, I did that once just by touching my tomato plant with the hand that I had just smoked with.

@Canino: Whether or not they had a garden in Chicago, it's nice that they are doing one now.
Lead by example and all that.

So um, is dish soap organic? Last I checked, it wasn't something I'd want to be eating. granted it won't kill me, but ultra dawn can't be organic...and what happens when it gets drained into the aquifer?

They seem to be all up in arms about this organic garden, comparing it to commercial agriculture. There is no comparison. I have a small garden, and I would be furious if a local farmer stopped by and told me all the things I "Could" or "Should" be doing.

Next we will all be arguing whether cheese from Wisconsin is better than cheese from Vermont.

In other words, WHO CARES. It's the President's choice, and he made a decision he believed worked best for them. He just wanted some fresh veggies, that's all.

My grandfather had a farm in New Mexico (my parents and grandmother always referred to it as "The Garden" but it was a couple of acres of crops plus some livestock, so... anyway...)

Since he built his farm during the dust bowl (and BTW built his house and garage himself) he had to dig his own wells at various points around the farm for irrigation and water service to the house.

The pumps consisted of whatever two-stroke and automobile engines he could get his hands on cheap, and every day he went out to "The Garden" and fueled up the pumps, started them, and began his daily routine.

This long and seemingly pointless comment does have a point, and that is: the various combustion engines he used to pump water also spewed various noxious gasses around the farm. Which did a great job of keeping the pests away. I never once saw my grandfather spray pesticides on his crops.

@HappyCthulhu: Chives, bitches! Chives!

So I tried to read the letter in full. Maybe it's just me, but I'm actually trained in such things (partial English degree) and I still was unable to wade through the padding of bullcrap to get to what they were actually trying to say. Is that how politicking works? That is no way to make a point. =( The essaying protocols that were branded into my forebrain cry out and are silenced.

Oh, wait. In the last paragraph they give him a link with information on 'crop protection products' that is like the little emails that my mom sends me saying, "You should check this out - I thought you might find it interesting :-)".

@WiglyWorm: A shelter dog vs. purchased dog has zero to do with allergies. There's no truly hypoallergenic dog, and beyond that shelters get filled with mixes that are the ones sold as hypoallergenic.

@Ratty: Very difficult to find (although he is the President, I guess...), and they're often older. Granted, that's where I'll eventually get my hypoallergenic dog, but you do also run into the issue of not being able to train it from a young age, and you won't know about genetic health problems the way you might from a (reputable) breeder.

Long story short: some people need to spend less time looking for things by which to be offended. This comment not directed at Ratty. :)

@Swizzler121: What does she do when she sees the bugs, wave at them?

@HappyCthulhu: Yeah I only found out about that last year. It's horrifyingly contagious.

@sponica: lol good call. You really cant avoid chemicals in the modern world, theres phalates in shampoos that are absorbed into your skin, chemicals in the air of course, and if you have municipal drinking water theres a good chance your drinking asbestos (flakes off the asbestos/concrete pipes that were popular in the past). Of course asbestos is actually a mineral and drinking it doesn't do anything bad but telling people they are drinking it usually freaks them out.

No doubt if they make a Chicago style "campaign contribution" they will get what they want.

@cuchanu: You must know some magical people, because I don't know anyone who can shoot themselves in the head and come out of it without a scratch.

When I was a kid, my parents had a garden, and I don't remember them using pesticides unless fertilizer is included in that. I think if it's not needed why add it? The letter just sounds silly; I don't see how using pesticides is going to help the economy, which is what I understood from that. I am all for going organic just to drive that lady crazy.

@HappyCthulhu: I thought you were going to warn us about Tomacco, in which case I'd have to point out that I think it was the Uranium that was the cause of that...

I don't use them but that is no reason for anyone to "shudder". What a total drama queen!

@Crabby Cakes: Exactly what I thought. "Oh noes, where's my chemicals"? Doesn't make sense. What, you can catch syphilis from a cucumber that hasn't been properly chemically-treated or something?

Another thing that doesn't make much sense is the letter they sent. The closest they ever seem to get to a POINT is:

"As you go about planning and planting the White House garden, we respectfully encourage you to recognize the role conventional agriculture plays in the U.S in feeding the ever-increasing population, contributing to the U.S. economy and providing a safe and economical food supply."

Otherwise, it reads like some sort of a let's-be-pen-pals thing, all "hi, I heard you're going to start a garden. I like gardens too! Gardens are good! They give us food!"

And even that line is so vague as to be nearly meaningless... okay, the average farmer produces enough food for 144 people, yay, I hereby official recognize him/her. Good job, well done. Now if you'll excuse me I've got six tomato plants to get settled.