1. Home
  2. Question and Answer
  3. Houseplants
  4. Garden Articles
  5. Most Popular Plants
  6. Plant Nutrition

Organic roses


Question
It seems to me that organic roses are not really that important. we don't eat them, so why should they be organic? Plus, major companies (I assume) are selling roses on valentines day every year and you don't hear that they had to close any farms down because the workers got sick from spraying all the chemicals.  And one last thing, there is no real studying of roses per se in any universities or anywhere else except that on inA ustralia that came upwith a blue rose.  Please comment on all of the above. My zone doesn't matter. But for the record Im in the USA.

Answer
Where do I begin....

You're right, we don't USUALLY eat roses - but they are a fun garnish at salads and on wedding cakes.  Have you ever had a Cystallized Rose petal?  Sold with Crystallized Violets at your favorite grocer?  Very pretty grownup food.

The Rose business around Valentines Day is by some standards a global disgrace.  Colombia, which encourages flower production as a way of steering agricultural away from cocaine farming, and Ecuador hold the bulk of the trade - 70% according to the USDA.  From Ecuador alone, 500,000 boxes of flowers are shipped to the U.S. each year during the two weeks leading up to Valentine's Day.  That doesn't count the millions shipping from Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand, Malaysia and Zambia.  It isn't the warm mid-February summer alone that yields those Rose numbers.  Lax pesticide laws, which encourage poor workers working long hours for low wages, to apply, breathe and handle chemicals that have long been banned in the U.S., make Rosegrowing fast and cheap - Aldicarb, Fenamifos, Methiocarb, Paclobutrazol, Pimirarb and HUNDREDS of other chemicals pour all over arms and hands each day to kill bugs and fungus in their greenhouses.

Not to mention these chemically dependent Rose companies pirate most of the favorite U.S. hybrids, which they grow illegally to avoid paying royalties to U.S. breeders.

Since the European and American pesticides themselves are such moneymakers for their producers, it will take a Higher Power to halt their use in countries where the powerful prey on desperate people whose greatest needs are basic food, clothing and shelter and not long term health consequences.  The Third World and those on its fringes have no intent to close down anyone over a few dead and dying greenhouse workers.  After all, there's more where they came from.

I am confused by what you mean when you talk about the "studying of roses" - please clarify.

Copyright © www.100flowers.win Botanic Garden All Rights Reserved