ONE GOAL THAT STAYS AT THE TOP OF MY LIST: • We gardeners should turn our backs on miracle products that make extravagant claims. Texas is full of them. • If you make and sell a product that you claim will kill or repress insects, diseases or weeds, you must prove that definitively to state agencies. If you claim a product to have important nutrients, so that it can act as a fertilizer to some degree, you must carefully identify the complete contents of that product to a state agency. You are given, in all of these cases, a “legal label” to affix directly and firmly to the product itself (not to lay on a counter beside it). • HOWEVER, if you want to make and sell a soil amendment in Texas, and if you do not make any of the claims just mentioned above, you can say just about anything you want. It’s buyer-beware. • Words like “amazing,” “miracle,” “enzymes,” “microbes” and “hormone” get thrown around wildly. (I had a photo of a product print ad I was going to post with this, but I decided that I didnt need any lawsuits at this point. That ad used ALL of those buzzwords.) Ladies, and gentlemen, for all of my career, there have been quack products pushed onto the unsuspecting gardeners of Texas, and almost all of that time, they drop into the category of “soil amendments.” And for all of my career, I have refused to allow these products to advertise on my radio or television programs, in my magazine or online on my website or in my newsletter. There is no place for products that promise the moon, yet deliver nothing. Some of you know that I quit my successful radio program at WFAA 570AM in April 1980 rather than letting ads for one of these pieces of junk air on my program. Management demanded I do the ad, so I wrote out my resignation and walked straight out the back door. I slept better than night than I’d slept for weeks. Our legislature ought to adopt a “if you claim it, you should first prove it” policy. Not with testimonials and questionably “independent” testing labs, but with legitimate university research from a respected Ag college. The manufacturers should be required to put up all the research funds before any tests could begin. My bet is that not one quack soil amendment in 10,000 would take that challenge. They know they have snake oil, and they don’t need to spend money on research to prove it. They need to spend money moving outside of Texas!
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 14:36:44 +0000
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