The latest organic gardening news and views about organic gardens
Organic Gardening
Back in 1996, I was contacted by Mort Mather about publishing his organic gardening articles on line. I was just in there cleaning up some things and I got to reading some of the articles. What a treasure! Anyone interested in organic gardening should check out the Garden Spot and read some of Mort's informative articles. Mort likes to say that the soil is your bank, and you won't be able to...
How To Use a Bounty of Cherry Tomatoes
Location: Emmaus, PA
Hi My Organic Gardening Blog,
My name is Paul Kita and I am an assistant editor over at Men’s [...]
Getting organic matter into the soil
I've started organic gardening, but my soil isn't very good. I have found multiple ways of getting organic matter into my soil, but my garden is huge 50' x 150'. In your opinion what would be the best way to get organic matter into my soil. I have a compost pile, but it is not big enough to support the entire garden. Should I grow a cover crop? Should I layer the garden with green sand fertil...
Time to start hording hay and manure
The only ripe tomatoes I've gotten this year are the cherry kind and I'm already thinking about winter. Maybe it was the 48 degree night we had last week, or maybe it's the old joke from a few posts ago that we have two seasons up here, the 4th of July and winter, but I'm already thinking about bedding this baby down for the winter with layers of manure and hay. Maybe the fact that I once again p...
My experiment with growing potaotes in old trash cans does not appear to be a success. I have not had [...]
The recent heat wave has people sweltering and gardens swooning. Watering is typically a relaxing task but in this [...]
Whew…It has been darn hot here at SaferŪ Brand Headquarters and the weather channel says it’s a heat wave up [...]
Like Music, Gardening Makes Better Students
What a great story. Nothing helps the planet more than people growing their own food, so teaching youngsters about it makes sense for their future. And learning first hand about science and work is great! in reference to: "Pupils should be encouraged to grow vegetables and tend flowerbeds because gardening boosts a child's development and improve standards in other subjects." - Gardening 'Can ...
Another Fact about Organic Agriculture that Will Be Ignored
I've been seeing a lot of studies lately that prove organic is better. This one is especially interesting because pesticides are the worst of the worst when it comes to spraying. Linked to cancers, ADHD, Parkinson's, and many other diseases, pesticides harm agricultural workers and consumers, especially consumers who are children. We all suffer from the petroleum-based agriculture that big busin...
Sweet Tater Containers
June 2010
In South Carolina, where I was born, sweet potatoes are as common in the garden as on [...]
Heard a new joke about the weather up here
A warm day today as the 4th approaches reminds me of a joke I heard recently about the weather up here, which has turned me into a year-around cold weather gardener now (lots of greens and peas, although I still try to grow peppers ): They say we have two seasons up here: winter and the 4th of July.
My Journey With Candida Blog: With Help From Ellen Kamhi and Nature's Answer, I have completed Stage l Of The Candida Cleanse
Raising Red Wigglers for Fishing Baits
Location: Texas
This time, you are not just raising Red worms for worm composting but you are raising Red Wigglers for [...]
Protect Your Tomatoes from those Vicious Caterpillars
Location: Lititz, PA
With so many things trying to attack my tomatoes its a wonder I even end up with enough [...]
Location: Vermont
Romance. This is not a rose I grew. It was from a Valentine's bouquet. [...]
A fan of ours on facebook has a problem with leaf miners and asked what to do… Leaf Miners [...]
The NY Times reports more problems with organic certification from China (surprise, surprise), this time a case of conflict of interest by the Organic Crop Improvement Association, which used employees of a Chinese government agency to inspect state controlled farms. As demand for organic food rises, and supplies become more questionable (China, the Bush administration, corrupt corporations, fa...
NYT story features our friends and jerky meat suppliers
Our friends Dave and Sonia run Nectar Hills Farm just down the road from us, near Cooperstown, NY. We are members of their CSA, and we make our beef jerky from their grass-fed meat. They also grow terrific produce, have a wild ramp forrest (which is amazing), harvest honey, and many other things (pork, chickens, eggs, ducks, etc.). They are mentioned in this story about local meat being sold...
Location: Midwest
As a gardener, I'm always looking for ways to save money and grow the most organic garden. I compost, [...]
With all the news lately that organic is indeed better for you (and especially better for the planet, including healthy soil working as a carbon sink), it is especially important that this government (the first lady of which is making important strides for organics, local, and fighting childhood obesity) make its oversight of the organic certification process as transparent as possible. Further...
Our friend Cherie runs a Hawaii bed and breakfast on Maui and writes a Maui Hawaii Blog where she talks story about all the great stuff she does in Hawaii (like running her volunteer on vacation in Hawaii program ). If you love Hawaii, you should subscribe to her blog. In her latest post on organic gardening in Hawaii , Cherie offers up some hints for any organic gardener, and she post...
Times are tough for the organic coffee farmers
As you probably know if you read this blog regularly, we know some organic farmers and we do our best to help them thrive. But times are tough, especially for people selling products that are more expensive than conventionally grown. As one of our financially challenged friends likes to point out, it's just too damn expensive to do the right thing when it comes to food. Arguing with him that ...
Organic Caterer in Los Angeles
One of my internet marketing clients, Culinary Delight Catering in Los Angeles , has started an organic catering option for her clients which has quickly become quite popular. Here's the statement from their website: By offering organic food to our customers, we feel like we're helping everyone do the right thing. Organic food is better for our customers' health, and it's better ...
Going into my second year in upstate NY--where it still gets cold, just not so much anymore--and I'm amazed again at what can survive the winter and just start growing again like all that snow and degrees owed (only got down to -9 once this winter) never happened. Out there this morning planting peas in earnest (the St. Patty's day peas were a crap out), I came across radicchio , ...
My friend back in California is still waging war with the invading ants, who apparently are of the sugartee--a militant sect of sugar eating ants that wage guerrilla warfare in a territorial battle for southern California. My friend was asking about aspartame , the sugar substitute in Equal, which kills ants when they eat it. Since I know he doesn't want anything even potenti...
Since we sell grass-fed beef jerky , we like to plug any story we hear about how much better grass-fed beef is. It's usually about how the grass is better food for cows, which make the cows better food for you. So, we have this saying: Grass-fed beef is better for you, the animals, and the planet. What you don't usually hear is how grass-fed beef is better for the planet. We like to tout t...
Bush Administration Ignored Organic Laws
I'm shocked, shocked to discover that Bush was the head of a giant criminal organization . In this case, it seems we were all being ripped off, paying for organic that probably wasn't. New Management at USDA Reforms, Strengthens National Organic Program WASHINGTON, DC: After an extensive audit and investigation of alleged improprieties at the USDA's National Organic Program, the agency'...
Break the Tradition... Un-corned Beef!
Tradition has it that up here at 42.77 north latitude you don't plant anything less hardy than a collard until after Memorial Day. But there is, of course, a contrary tradition of planting peas on St. Patrick's day, which I shall now be doing, at least in the places where the snow has melted and where I can get without waste-high mud boots. There is also this tradition of eating corned-...
Weeds Genetically Engineer Themselves to Resist Roundup
Monsanto deserves its critics. They genetically engineered plants to resist Roundup, and now the weeds are doing the same to keep up. Way to go Monsanto... in reference to: "Scientists said on Friday they have confirmed expanding weed resistance to a key ingredient in Monsanto's (MON.N)widely used Roundup herbicide, a troubling development for farmers and fresh fodder for Monsanto critics." - ...
OK, I shouldn't be so harsh when people discover that grass-fed beef is better for you and the planet , especially when they're playing up the angle that rotating fields of grass-fed beef actually improves degraded soil. But it is a sort of duh. Just look at the fertile plains of North America that the settlers found under roaming buffalo that had built the prairie over eons of ...
The question I get most often is how to get rid of bugs. The answer, for the garden at least, is to make sure your soil is healthy, which will make sure your plants are healthy (other factors do apply, like sun, temperature, water...), which will make the plants more able to resist bugs. Stressed out plants are bug magnets, since bugs are just doing their job by helping weed out the weaklings.
As my friend Mort Mather says, the soil is your bank. You can't make withdrawals unless you make deposits. I get composting straw and manure from Nectar Hills Farm (where we also get the beef for our grass-fed gourmet beef jerky ), which I mix with my kitchen waste to create compost that I then deposit into the soil bank so I can make fresh veggie withdrawals. Mort and I are both lazy gardene...
A very good friend of mine from my stagehand days recently bought a house--a fixer upper in ant country--and asked for some help on that front. Ants go where the food is, so first, make sure there's nothing for them to eat. This is most important! Cut off their supplies! Now the battle can begin! Put out the ant baits you can buy anywhere, but put them outside near their homes. I used to ...
Community Supported Agriculture
This is an interesting post on Grist: It takes a community to sustain a small farm . It doesn't mention CSAs, community supported agriculture, where local residents purchase "shares" of a farm, which guarantees delivery of a set amount of food over a period of time, usually a year. But it does address the issues small, local farms face, considering that agribusiness has been putting the little gu...
Robin's Best Grass-fed Beef Jerky Ever!
If you're lucky enough to be up here in the walk-in freezer that is upstate New York this weekend, you'll want to swing by the Cooperstown Farmer's Market , the last of the year, for the best Happy Hobo grass-fed beef jerky Robin's ever made. The grass-fed Highlander's top round that this batch of jerky is made from is, as we're told, as good as they get, having spent the whole summer eating g...
Good looking and inexpensive hoop houses are the focus of this White House Blog post by Sam Kass, assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator for the WH. Glad to see they're growing all my favorites, especially mustard greens! I wish I'd had the time to put in some hoops over my greens. Too busy of a year-end for us to get out there and do much. I'm looking forward to seeing what lives thro...
Organic gardening isn't just about getting your hands in the soil, it's also about sitting on the deck afterwards with a glass of wine in one hand and a ... timestranscript.com - Garden tools make great gifts - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada
For those growing carrots, beets, turnips or Jerusalem artichokes and wishing to extend the harvest into winter, apply a heavy mulch of straw to the crops to prevent the soil from freezing deep and ruining the crop. Parsley will continue to grow well into December, especially if covered by a basket on particularly cold nights. Fertilize the lawn - after a soil test! November is the ideal tim...
Four uses for coffee grounds in the home garden
Four uses for coffee grounds in the home garden
Saving Bumble Bees and Honey Bees
We can encourage agricultural practices that are better for the bees by buying organic foods when we can, and supporting small farmers at our local farmers' ...
Southside Pride
Did you know that during the molting stages of the caterpillar, a "juvenile hormone" keeps the insect in the caterpillar stage and will not allow it to enter the chrysalis stage. When the caterpillar has fully grown, it stops eating and crawls away from its host plant to find a safe area for its next change. The hormone is no longer produced, and the caterpillar sheds its skin to reveal its chrysa...
Daily Dose of Daffodils and Tulips
I see as I walk past gardens, different ways gardeners have handled the unsightly left-overs of a beautiful spring garden that was once daffodils and tulips. The very last thing you want to do is cut down the plant. That's like putting a stake through a gardeners heart. Bulbs grace us with their early display of colorful life, drawing from the bulb the life it has stored over winter, lif...
Tomatoes Are at the Top of my List!
When it comes to tomatoes it's hard to beat a Roma. Meaty and flavorful it is one of the most versatile tomatoes I know. And ask any gardener, they'll tell you, nothing beats homegrown over store bought like the flavor of a tomato. As far as being clean (talking chemicals in the commercially grown tomatoes) the tomato is on the clean list, being 14 out of 15 with #1 being the cleanes...
To have a successful garden, a gardener must be a multi-tasker. In other words, it's not enough to get your seeds started. Once the weather has warmed a bit and the soil has dried out too, early prep of the garden bed is necessary. Once you have a season in the garden under your belt, then much of this prep work will have been done in the fall, when you put the garden to bed for the wi...
There is nothing more miraculous than watching a seed push it's way through the surface of the soil towards the light, other than the birth of a child. Seriously, a seed so miniscule and seemingly inert when put to soil with added moisture, heat, and sometimes light (depending on the seed) will suddenly erupt into a power of life that can move mountains compared to it's size. That must be whe...
Dusting off the Organic Gardening Blog
I look at the date on my last post and I think, OMG, where did all that time go? So now it's time to dust off this blog and get back to business. It's spring in my neck of the woods, and that usually means being busier than a one armed wall paper hanger. We've talked about it before, if you're an organic gardener you know that the gardening season really begins in the fall with lasag...
Who are the pollinators and why are they important?
Bees: Bees are the best pollinators in the Eastern United States and their tireless work benefits the reproduction of a myraid of crops essential to human existence such as alfalfa, melons, soybeans and tomatoes.
Not all bees are created equal and most of us are familiar with the colonies of honey bees that have provided agricultural pollination...
What is Compost Tea? | The Dwarf Fruit Trees Blog
Great information on different ways to make compost tea.
What is Compost Tea? The Dwarf Fruit Trees Blog
Take a look at this video. Urban Homesteaders, a hmegrown revolution.
YouTube - dervaes's Channel
