From Majordomo@steamradio.com Fri Jul 30 22:39:44 1999 Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 03:31:40 +0100 From: Majordomo@steamradio.com To: london@metalab.unc.edu Subject: Welcome to organic-l -- Welcome to the organic-l mailing list! Please save this message for future reference. Thank you. If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, you can send mail to with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe organic-l or from another account, besides london@metalab.unc.edu: unsubscribe organic-l london@metalab.unc.edu If you ever need to get in contact with the owner of the list, (if you have trouble unsubscribing, or have questions about the list itself) send email to . This is the general rule for most mailing lists when you need to contact a human. [Last updated on: Wed Mar 10 17:04:04 1999] Welcome to the Organic-L mailing list! ADMINISTRIVIA If you ever want to remove yourself from this list, send a message to: with unsubscribe organic-l in the body of the message. If you need to resubscribe under another name, or rejoin, send a message to: with subscribe organic-l in the body of the message The list's posting address is Any message posted to that address goes to every member of the list. If you reply to a message posted to the list, the reply should go automatically to this address too. If you find that it doesn't, read on... If you need to contact the list owner privately (perhaps to report a bug), mail Messages to this address do NOT go to the whole list. INTRODUCTION This discussion group is for gardeners and plant growers who use, or are interested in, Organic practices. Whilst being based in the UK, posters from other areas are most welcome, but bear in mind that discussion will probably have a bit of UK bias. Members cultivate areas from the size of a windowbox up to large Organic farms. Don't feel left out because you've only a little vegetable patch! WHAT DOES ORGANIC MEAN? Organic (with a capital 'O') practice is a form of plant and animal husbandry which emphasises an approach sympathetic with the planetary ecosystem. In general, synthetic chemicals are not used, and the use of natural fertilisers and pest control techniques (like companion planting and appropriate mulching) is encouraged. Apart from the ecological benefits, this usually results in tastier food, free from the synthetics residues found in most supermarket produce. Because there are many differing, but officially accepted, definitions of "Organic", depending upon the country and the licensing authority, this list uses the Henry Doubleday Research Association's guidelines for cultivation to define the term. This list is for the discussion specifically of Organic cultivation; we don't cover Organic methods of animal husbandry. WHAT WE WANT ...is discussion on any aspect of Organic gardening which takes your fancy. It's quite natural for a mailing list to form a community, and posts which are a little off-topic but serve to bind that community (for example, arranging meets and swapping seeds) are fine, provided they don't swamp the rest. WHAT WE DON'T WANT ...is acrimonious arguments, or heavily off-topic threads. Posters who stray from the path will be brought back into line by the Listmaster. WHAT WE _REALLY_ DON'T WANT ...is people leaving the list, feeling offended and alienated. Posters who post articles which could cause that to happen (or who break the Rules of the Road below) will be given a Public Warning by the Listmaster. They will be expected to apologise unreservedly to the whole list, if they are to continue to be permitted access. A second offence will result in the poster being denied posting rights for a period, or bounced from the list permanently. In serious cases, posters will be excluded on a first offence. RULES OF THE ROAD 1. No binaries. At all. That means no attachments; no word-processor documents, spreadsheets, images or programs. Postings giving URLs of such items on the World Wide Web, or FTP addresses, are encouraged if on-topic. 2. No HTML. Badly-configured Web clients (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or NetScape Nagivator) can send HTML in ordinary email. No thanks! Sometimes people use fake HTML tags to convey subtexts in their articles; that's OK (if geeky), but don't overdo it. 3. Commercial advertisements are permitted, providing: (i) they are brief (under 25 lines, .sig included); (ii) they give the poster's full business address and phone number; (iii) the Subject line starts with "COMM:" (for "commercial"); (iv) they are directly related to Organic gardening; (v) they are infrequent (not more than once per month per poster). These conditions may be subject to change if abused. 4. Private advertisements, if on-topic, are fine, but don't overdo it. 5. No anonymous postings. If you can't admit to posting it, don't post it. 6. Offensive or abusive postings are absolutely forbidden. 7. There are some specific subjects which are not open to discussion on this list, because they are very likely to cause argument and dissention in what's otherwise a very friendly group of people: (i) attempting to change the list's meaning for "Organic". Whilst members are likely to tolerate discussion of practices which are in a different, but formally-accepted, definition of Organic practice, the HDRA definition wins in any argument; (ii) attempting to advocate or discuss using methods which are definitely not Organic. This list is about Organic practice; there are plenty of general gardening forums elsewhere where non-Organic practices can be discussed.