Why Bother?

I was on a gardening forum recently when a women posted that she wanted to grow an organic garden in raised beds built out of cedar. Her husband balked at the cost of cedar and shorter-lifespan of untreated pine.  He wanted to use treated lumber.  When I said I didn't understand using treated lumber in an organic garden, another poster didn't understand why anyone would pay 8x the price for a garden...why bother gardening at that point.

For decades pressure treated lumber was...well, treated...with chromated copper arsenate as a preservative.  Everyone thought this was the answer to all our problems...until research came out that arsenic leached into the soil.  Now, some studies said that there wasn't horizontal leaching (meaning, only the contact area near the wood was contaminated...not 20 feet away), others said there was more of an issue.  As far as I can tell, both sides agree that the soil is containmented for a very, very long time.  There was also some debate over how much arsenic the veggies absorbed and whether or not repeated ingestion of higher (but still small) levels of arsenic was hazardous to human health or not.  Regardless, the EPA banned it's consumer use several years ago.

The new pressure-treated-kid-on-the-block is ACQ: Alkaline copper quat.  There is no arsenic in this, just more copper, which does leach.  I've been to several ACQ lumber-manufacturer websites and they all say in the "safety" information

Do not use pressure-treated wood in circumstances where the preservative may become a component of food, animal feed, or beehives.

I'm having a hard time finding the USDA's official ruling on whether pressure treated lumber can be used in organic farms (maybe for hog pens, for example).  I have found that Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association, a National Organic Program (NOP) certifier, does not allow pressure treated wood on new construction on organic farms. Because NOP certifiers are the ones that inspect USDA organic farms, I'm suspecting it isn't allowed.

Personally, I don't see the point in building a new raised bed with pressure treated lumber.  I can see the argument of just using a barrier if you inherited a pressure treated bed on your property.  However, the basic premise of organic gardening is to nourish your soil.  Having copper (a fungicide & insecticide) needlessly leach into your soil, in my opinion, isn't nourishing...it's potentially killing beneficials.  I don't really care if it's just on point of contact or not.  Leaching is leaching and it's the principle of the thing.

I'm not some elitist, though, that says you need to spend thousands on building raised beds instead of a few hundred.  Untreated pine is CHEAP and lasts about as long as the average homeowner plans to stay in their house.  Freecycle and Craigslist abound with cheap and free options for raised beds like cinder blocks, broken pieces of cement and scraps of cedar/redwood.  Then there's also the option of using hay bales.

So, why do I bother gardening with my pricey composite lumber boards? Because *not* gardening isn't an option.  Over the past few years, my garden has given me so many precious moments and delicious meals.  I remember when my first seeds sprouted-- it gave me the inkling of how a proud mama feels.  I remember our precious few strawberries which were the tastiest I've ever had (the chipmunks agreed).  Chocolate-dipped ground cherries remind me of being hugely pregnant, with empty cupboards, and needing something chocolate-y *right now*. 

I also garden to know where my food comes from...and to teach my child that baby carrots have tampered ends like "big" carrots and are not shaped like chubby thumbs.  Nothing tastes better than a home-grown tomato too!

And, finally, I garden to create a better environment around my house and my neighborhood.  I suppose this includes my ornamental garden as well.  Walking around my block it becomes clear that my neighbors don't have nearly as much wildlife in their yards. I see gold finches (and crazy looking birds I don't know their name!) in addition to the robins and crows and sparrows, a praying mantis climbed up my leg last summer and ladybugs are far more common now than when we first moved in.

These things make gardening worth more than the cost of my raised beds for me.  Your mileage may vary.

Blog Action Day: The Key Ingredient in Your Garden

What does vegetables, meat, clothing and swimming pools have in common?

Water.  The water that feeds plants--whether you eat them, look at them or weave them into cloth-- and hydrates animals has to come from somewhere...and has to GO somewhere.

When the terms "sustainable food" and "eating local" are tossed around, normally people talk about the miles it took for their food to get to their plate. Rarely is the amount of water used to grow or raise that food discussed or what happens to the water that runs off the agricultural or pasture fields.  And rarely do people think about their water usage in terms of necessity versus luxury activities.

As much as possible, we tried to use our rain barrel to water the garden but even that would run dry with the drought we've been having.  We mulch everywhere we have plants (even in containers) to help the soil retain moisture.  If we use fertilizers, even organic ones, we only apply the recommended dosage and no more (usually a little more diluted than that) to limit run off which pollutes our rivers and streams.

We are all incredibly lucky to live in a place where you can just turn on a spigot & get clean water on demand.  I know I could be more efficient with my water usage.  Just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it.

Do you know your water footprint?  You can find out at Waterfootprint.org.

Here are some water-footprints of common foods:
It takes 140 liters of water to produce 1 cup of coffee.
It takes 16,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of beef.
It takes 1,350 liters of water to produce 1 kg of wheat.
It takes 1,000 liters of water to produce 1 liter of milk.
It takes 3,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of rice.

Change.org|Start Petition

"Gardens are a Sign of Commitment to a Place"

My favorite part of Hidcote Manor Garden from our trip to England a few years ago was this amazing beech "forest". A charming iron gate leads you to perfect rows of beech trees. It was just magical. I remember thinking that many of the grand gardens and grand houses we were seeing had plants that would take a more than lifetime to form a 15 foot tall hedge or a mature mock-forest. I also remember thinking that fast growing trees and shrubs (along with eye-catching annuals) was what I could mostly find in my neighborhood.

Today I attended a lecture by the author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, Fritz Haeg. He was describing his project on turning lawn-filled front yards into productive and beautiful landscapes and how that affected the garden owners and their relationship with the people around them.

He also described his excitement, and trepidation, with doing the project for a more transient apartment complex.

One of the audience members asked if he had ever considered more mobile gardens for these apartment residents to take with them when they move. Mr. Haeg responded that whatever garden that works on this street may not work on one street over. "Gardens," he said, "are a sign of commitment to a place. You're not going to tear up your front yard if you're planning to sell your house in a year."

Is the American dream of moving your way up the real estate ladder the reason why we don't see more daring front yards such as what Mr. Haeg has created? Or why we see vast stretches of lawn from coast-to-coast that historically said/says "I'm so rich, I don't need my land to be productive"? Is it why we see the likes of Bradford Pears and other fast growing, almost disposable trees? After all, why spend time & money on a plant you, your children or your grandchildren won't see to maturity?

Whatever the answer to those questions are, I do believe that he's got a point: Gardens ARE a sign of a commitment to a place. They require care and maintenance and work. You don't do that if you aren't emotionally involved with that place.

Needless to say, I'm not more excited than ever to turn half of my front yard into an herb garden this fall.

What I Hope To Teach My Son

Sometimes I hold the little fella we call Sprout (that's not his real name, by the way. I'm not Gwyneth Paltrow!) looking out the window that faces our garden. Occasionally, it seems like he's actually seeing the orange tomatoes ripening and the kung pao peppers turning red. Other times, he's clearly not as he's cross-eyed, staring at the ground or, my favorite, looking up at me very seriously with his big brown eyes.

As he discovers that his hands contain fingers and that these taste pretty good, I start to think about what I'll teach him. There is of course the thought of teaching him to say "Please" and "Thank you" and to not chew with his mouth open. Oh, and using the toilet instead of diapers to do his business; that will be a big one. But beyond the things that essentially will make him a functioning member of society, I find myself more excited to teach him where food comes from and, hopefully, developing a sense of food culture with him.

I am increasingly finding this more & more important as it becomes apparent that both our environment and our waistlines depend on how and what kinds of food we eat. Conventional agriculture pollutes our groundwater (via run-off), air (via dependency on oil) and soil (via chemical fertilizers). Think that crops can only be good for you? Corn & soybeans, a large percentage of crops, are primarily destined to become junk food that we'll mindlessly stuff into our gullet. Not good.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a junk food or fast food hater. I love me some mac & cheese out of the blue box (or if I'm feeling spendy, the yellow one) from time to time. The difference, I feel, is that I'm aware I'm not eating "food," I'm mostly eating chemicals that have been combined to look and taste like food. Additionally, I treat these overall as treats and less of apart of my actual diet. And I'm also not a totally in-season, local eater. I have been known to purchase celery in winter for a soup or lettuce in summer for a salad. But I try to keep that to a minimum as in-season, local food does taste better as well as being the more sustainable choice.

Food, for most of us, comes from the grocery store where it is clean and misted with water every 15 minutes to make it look "fresh" (nevermind this encourages rot...). Overall, we don't know how to grow it, we don't know how to cook it and we might even be afraid of eating it despite "it" being what our great-grandparents ate.

I find this very sad as a food lover.

In the US we are less fortunate as we don't have a distinctive food culture. When I visited the Cotswolds in England, as you walked into a pub, you were greeted by a chalk board that listed where all their meat, dairy, vegetables and beer came from. In France, the release of possibly my favorite red wine, Beaujolais Nouveau, is cause for celebration. We don't have anything like that here. Certainly there are regional cuisines (some of which rely on processed food) but even then we have no sense of when tomatoes are in season or whether grapes grow in our state.

While little Sprout may never be a horticulturalist or chef or farmer, he will be an eater. I want him to know where his food comes from. I want him to celebrate the first strawberries and tomatoes. I want him to be able to have an idea what is in season (or, at the very least, have an idea what isn't). And, most importantly, I want him to know how much work growing quality food that respects the environment, the workers and the food itself (in the case of animals) really is....and that it's worth every penny.

Organic Gardening Blues

After getting tomatoes earlier this year and having a much drier spring, I felt confident that the I was out of the woods with respect to tomato diseases. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I suspected a fungus had attacked 3 of my plants and had this confirmed at Merrifield's plant help desk. An organic gardener then faces a decision: Do I rip & dispose of these plants or do I succumb to using a conventional fungicide?

It's a really hard decision. To take out those plants means taking out all the canning tomatoes that I've nurtured for months. Plus, since I have a small garden, every space counts. Removal takes out 1/3 of my total tomato crop and 1/2 of my non-cherry tomato crop. But, if I did spray, the plants would have significantly less pesticides than conventional produce in the grocery store. However, then it's not an organic garden. Do I lose potential yield or do I go against my organic beliefs?

Ultimately, I did a hybrid approach: remove the plants with significant fungal issues and spot treat the plants near it with conventional fungicide (my husband actually did this). I'm not entirely pleased with this decision, but it's the decision I made. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite, honestly. Last year I also had fungal issues (and pulled out those plants) so I think going forward I'll only purchase seeds resistant to the common tomato fungi. And, of course, I'm going continue to be as sanitary as possible when handling my tomatoes.

Perhaps next year, then, this type of decision won't have to be made.

Nursery Rant

I'm beginning to think that some of people's gardening "failures" aren't really their fault and are the fault of the nursery where they bought the plant and/or got advice on planting. I'm not going to name the nurseries where these offenses occurred, but I can say that these incidents did not happen at a big box store.

Exhibit #1: Plants in pots that won't let them thrive.
Most people's first experience with growing something is a houseplant. I was at a nursery that was selling the *most* adorable little African violets in antique-esque measuring cups. So cute! SO unpractical. The cardinal rule of African violet growing is that they, like cats, hate being too wet. A measuring cup-turned-pot without a drainage hole is a surefire way to kill it ASAP.

Exhibit #2: Wrong information.
I want to grow a vine. After discussing several options with my horticulture teacher, I became interested in American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens). According to her (she's got like 20+ years in the field), unlike Japanese or Chinese wisteria, which are notorious for quickly taking down structures, American wisteria is much better behaved. I went to a nursery to seek it out (I have see it at Farmer's Markets). A helpful person approached me & asked if I was looking for something specific. I asked if they carried American wisterias. She said: "No, we don't. It just takes over and can pull down things, so we only carry the Japanese and Chinese ones. They are much better behaved." I didn't want to start an argument right there in the nursery (although, my iPhone was handy to show her she had mixed them up). And, as it turned out, they *did* carry cultivars of American wisteria...and Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinesis).

It's unfortunate, really. Who are budding plant enthusiasts supposed to get reliable growing information from if not their local nursery?

Blog Action Day: How Climate Change Affects Thanksgiving and Your Birthday

In honor of Blog Action Day on climate change, I want to talk about food.

Yes, food. For me, nothing brings back fonder memories than food. I can remember the smell of collard greens cooking for Thanksgiving, my all-time favorite holiday. Then there is the smell of kielbasa sausage on the grill that reminds me of the very first meal my mother & I enjoyed after she bought our first house or the smell of cinnamon which is what that house always smelled like. Sometimes, it’s more of a texture thing like the pleasant denseness of my paternal grandfather’s “brown bread” or the smooth, not chunky, filling of my maternal grandmother’s pecan pie or even the melt-in-your-mouth consistency of the bbq brisket at my wedding.

If you consider it, all celebrations include some sort of food. Birthdays have cake (or in the instance of my husband, pie), Thanksgiving has turkey, Passover has a whole host of traditional foods, Halloween has candy and, in my house, Easter has the Cadbury Egg. Food is not only what sustains us, but also how we show we care (via chicken noodle soup when someone’s not feeling well), we love (via a heart-shaped box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day) and we relate to each other (via happy hours with friends or dinner & a movie with dates).

Food also is an integral part of our cultural history. I come from a long line of stubborn Southern women that love to cook, eat and feed others. Part of my identity comes from the very distinctive foods I grew up with and I love sharing that with people. Whether it’s proving to them just how delicious cabbage can be or introducing them to greens, I love to share about where I come from. I similarly love learning about others from food. Whether it’s my coworker sharing the pupusa her grandmother made or my husband making pikliz, it’s all delicious and fascinating. Who said the shortest distance between 2 people was through their stomachs? I’ve always found that to be true. You probably can’t leave my house without some bit of herb, a few spare tomatoes or a handful of dahlias.

So, what is the point I am trying to make? Food is important. More important than we initially realize. It’s how we express ourselves, it’s how we celebrate, it’s part of our identity, and it’s how we stay alive. And this is why climate change’s impact on agriculture (or agriculture’s impact on climate change: it’s responsible for 7% of US greenhouse gas emissions…and we don’t even produce all our own food), indeed our entire food system, is so frightening:

Recent studies indicate that increased frequency of heat stress, droughts and floods negatively affect crop yields and livestock beyond the impacts of mean climate change, creating the possibility for surprises, with impacts that are larger, and occurring earlier, than predicted using changes in mean variables alone. This is especially the case for subsistence sectors at low latitudes. Climate variability and change also modify the risks of fires, pest and pathogen outbreak, negatively affecting food, fiber and forestry. Source: EPA

To be fair, increasing temperatures could lengthen the growing season for many areas of the country. Climate change does have that going for it. It could also make it too warm to grow “traditional” foods in some places, like wine-making grapes in Napa, shorten the growing season for places hampered by hot summers (like my native FL) or increase the chance of severe droughts through soil evaporation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not up for “the possibility of surprises” when it comes to my food or its domestic production. Even if you firmly believe climate change is nothing more than just a climate cycle, wouldn’t local, organic sourcing of food and/or limiting consumption be a good thing in terms of your wallet, waistline, your local economy and the planet? I mean, it seems like a win-win situation, doesn’t it? And I won’t even get into the issues it would present to the developing world that already struggles with food production and does not have the technology, the money to buy the technology, nor, in many cases, the capacity to produce the technology that will ultimately be needed to cope with what scientists predict lies ahead.


Food is hard to grow. Any gardener can assure you that some years, despite best efforts, something is just going to fail to thrive. Add in a few floods, pathogen outbreaks, and severe droughts and even the most experienced farmer is going to have big issues...and those issues directly impact the food you put in your mouth and its costs. It's just not something I feel humans should leave to chance.

Thus, I encourage you, dear reader, to think about food: How it is apart of your life? What food legacy you want to leave to future generations? Every decision we make has an impact. Make sure your decisions today match your vision of the future.

For more blog action day entries, go to their homepage: http://www.blogactionday.org/

Don't Give Up

You might remember my epic battle with aphids on my pepper seedlings while they were still under the grow light. The aphids seemed to only have a taste for the peppers and mercifully spared my tomatoes. Only a few hot and sweet peppers did not suffer from significant damage after the attack(s). (By significant damage, I mean that 90% of 90% of the leaves were completely sucked dry.) I mourned the loss of my babies, convinced they were well beyond The Point Of No Return.

But my dear, consoling, I-hate-yardwork husband assured me they were just fine; they would be alright. I didn't believe him. I mean, without leaves, how could my babies make food? He just would look at them and then at me and say, almost confidently, "They'll be fine." He wouldn't let me throw them away.

When winter started to end, we still had almost leaf-less, very pathetic looking pepper plants. I bought some starts from a nursery and tried again to throw away the ones I started from seed. He wouldn't let me. Fine. I took them outside and set them, pot and all, in our fenced raised beds. I refused, however, to plant them convinced I would just be forced to watch them further decline. My husband reiterated: "They'll be fine." But, seriously, what did he know? He doesn't read gardening books, blogs and magazines at all, let alone the quantity I had! Also, he's never grown *anything* before!

After the peppers had survived, mostly neglected, outside for over a month (still in the pots I started them in), my husband took them and planted them in a most unsuitable spot: a pot on the other side of the house that gets MAYBE four hours of direct sun (morning at that!) a day. I told him they would definitely not survive, not there! "I'll take care of them, then," he replied.

Now, my husband, bless is heart, isn't terribly good at remembering things like watering plants. These peppers would go unwatered unless we had rain (which there was a lot of in the spring) or he happened to walk by them (which was rare). They would sulk and he would water only to find them sulking again next time he passed by.

But, my husband didn't give up. Recently, I've been re-landscaping the forgotten side of our house where he planted those peppers and saw this:

I have to say it: He was right. They are fine. And I was a bit melodramatic and foolish giving up on them. This is my lesson learned: In a garden, there's always a hope of success even if you don't always water or don't know exactly what you're doing or stupid aphid attack. If you don't try, you certainly can't succeed. I won't give up so easily next time.

The Elitism of Heirlooms

Today's Washington Post featured whole section on tomatoes, both the results of their tomato recipe contest and an article about heirloom tomatoes in particular. Timely, given my recent garden update and disappointment at one of my heirloom varieties and total enthusiasm for one of my hybrids.

Heirloom varieties are generally regarded as those that are pre-World War II and are open pollinated. They certainly look different from the more commercial hybrid varieties that are nice red globes, virtually indestructible. Heirloom tomatoes, on the other hand, are often ugly. They are squatty, color streaked, cat-faced, and/or misshapen. The idea is, however, that what they lack in looks, they make up in flavor.

Growing up, I had peripherally heard about heirlooms from cranky old people. But now? Heirlooms are chic. They are pricey. They are Of The Moment. They are the kind of tomato that you would by at Anthropologie, if Anthropologie was a grocery store: folksy, turned fashionable. Much like gardening itself has become recently.

There's also certainly an environmental argument for heirlooms. Preserving the ancestors of tomatoes can ultimately lead to better bio-diversity. Plus, you can save your own seed! Thrifty! And, in a few decades you just might have tomatoes perfectly adapted to your vegetable patch which is very cool.

But, it's my opinion, and that of Ms. Black, that some gardeners/consumers have taken this to the extreme. As I have found out this year with my Wonder Lights, not all heirloom tomatoes are delicious. In fact, due to their rising popularity they are being more commercially produced...something they were not breed to do. And not all hybrids are devoid of flavor (like my darling Sungolds) nor are they a genetically-modified devils. Hybridization can, and does, occur in nature. In fact, heirlooms are really just old hybrids. Genetic modification, on the other hand, is using molecular techniques and not cross-pollination to create a new variety.

As Jay Leno said in an episode of Top Gear about the Prius: "It's about the moral superiority. I'm driving an unattractive car and I am saving the planet. See, in American we like everyone to know the good work we are doing anonymously." Substitute "heirloom tomato" for "car," and I think this also rings true. Right down to the unattractive part.

If you exclusively grow or eat heirloom tomatoes, or any heirloom variety for that matter, this does not make you a superior person. Certainly, seeking out local food sources and different varieties is commendable. Having diversity in your garden is a good thing.

But don't snub a hybrid because it's not an heirloom. That's just like tomato age-ism!

Tell me your favorite variety of tomato. Heirloom or hybrid. What tastes the best and works the best in your garden?

PBS' Silence of the Bees

I'm a big fan of PBS programming, especially Mystery! and Nature. A recently re-aired episode, Silence of the Bees, is kind of a hybrid between those two topics. "Agriculture meets CSI!" What's not to love?

By now I'm sure you've heard about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In 2006, bees just up and left the hive in numbers (and ways) never witness before. Researchers are trying to determine if it's pesticides, a disease, a parasite, or a combination of multiple things that just create a perfect storm.

Bees are estimated to pollinate about 1/3 of all the food we eat. Not to mention flowers...if you add those in, according to the show, bees are responsible for the reproduction of 3/4 of the plants on Earth. This includes some crops eaten by animals (like cows) that humans also eat.

No bees = freaky food situation. And a world devoid of showy flowers.

Think that's centuries away? If CCD continues, it is estimated that by 2035 honeybees will be died off in the US. And, they already are in a part of Sichuan province in China. As shown in this documentary, farmers have to pollinate by hand there after pesticides killed off bee populations. That's right, humans play the role of bees. Can you imagine the price of your food if US farmers had to pollinate each flower of their crops?

Yikes.

I urge you to watch Silence of the Bees, look at the update on that site and plant flowers to feed bees (which you probably already do!). It's a really well-done documentary, like most of PBS programming.

This I Believe

On my way home from work, I listen to NPR. They are winding down their This I Believe series which is sad. This series gives me hope for the human race...that we aren't a bunch of uncaring idiots. If you haven't heard of it, you should definitely check it out.

To make this relevant to THIS blog, I thought I'd ramble about what I've learned from gardening. So, here it is:

I believe humans need a connection to the earth. Most of us wake up in our man-made house and drive in our man-made car to work (which is in man-made building) on man-made roads which have been made by clearing trees and relocating wildlife. For lunch we eat genetically modified food or overly processed food. The closest thing many of us get to "nature" is our lawn which in many regions of the country is completely unnatural. We soldier on in our man-made surroundings thinking everything is OK, that our lives are full.

And they are in a man-centric sense. We've got the best things (wo)man has created: comfortable shelter, machines that get us from point A to point B without any effort by us and food which we do not need to do anything to, save nuking in the microwave.

But, what about all the stuff that was around before we patented walking upright? We're missing out on all THAT stuff. Only interacting with stuff "we" made is kinda like living a "half-life."

The satisfaction of watching your food grow is amazing. Did you know that tomato plants have a unique smell to them? It's sorta "earthy" but bright. Peppers and other vegetables in that family don't have that smell; it seems to be unique to the tomato. Did you know that blueberry bushes can be huge? Like 6 feet tall! Or that scented geraniums can smell like roses, apples, cinnamon or limes? By gardening you're connecting to nature virtually everyday, even if it's just a bunch of containers of herbs on your windowsill.

I've found that, by gardening, I'm outside more. I get more exercise (lugging bags of compost or digging something up is hard work!). Additionally, I've found that I notice more of my surroundings. Driving through my neighborhood I've noticed new plants and trees. I'm positive they were always there, I just was too wrapped up in "man-made" concerns that I didn't notice. Also, I find that I can more about sustainability, as well as reduce/reuse/recycle. I mean, I don't want to muck up soil, air and water that help me grow my food and flowers.

I believe, in short, that a little dirt under your fingernails could do you, and the world, some good.

An Awesome Garden Can be Free-ish

Sorry I've been a bit MIA lately. I've been away for work quite a bit in the past 2 weeks. However, the seedlings (almost all of them) have at least another set of leaves. Some have THREE sets of leaves now! *sigh* They grow up so fast! ;)

Today, thanks to a cancelled flight, I had the opportunity to finish reading The Green Gardening Guide by Joe Lamp'l. What it really underscored for me was that you don't need to spend a ton of money for a gorgeous garden, whether it be full of veggies, flowers or foliage. Which I knew in my heart of hearts but forget every time I walk into a garden center and am seduced by various fertilizers, specialty tools, etc. You.don't.need.all.that.crap. Seriously. Resist the urge. Save your pennies for a nice bottle of wine or a craft beer to enjoy after an afternoon in the garden.

Let's review what plants need to thrive: Appropriate amounts of light, rich soil, and water. Sun light is free. Rich soil can be free too.

Say what?!? Free awesome soil?

Compost my friends, compost. Don't landfill those veggie peels or coffee grounds or fall leaves, throw them in the compost pile! First off, nothing, not even organic matter, decomposes in our landfills so get the idea that the landfill is like a ginormous compost pile out of your head. (Which also means that you should not be seduced by biodegradable packaging or anything else. But I'll save that rant for another day.) Secondly, compost piles can be super low tech: a pile of stuff on the ground. Personally, we use a black trash can with holes drilled into it. Working compost into the worst soils, including Virginia clay, make it rich, well-draining, and awesome. Because compost is black gold. I love that Lamp'l points out that when you fertilize your plants, you're really feeding the soil. And since good, rich soil is composed of lots of microorganism, earthworms & insects, don't use a fertilizer that feeds the plant but kills the stuff that makes your soil good (like, ahem, conventional fertilizers). That's like one step forward, two steps back!

Think your soil might be deficient in something? Contact your local extension office. Often soil tests are free or cheap (like $10).

Let's move onto water. Water for the garden can be free: rain. If you build a rain barrel (or buy. This is the option we are going to do), you can dramatically reduce the extra water you purchase to water your plants. The Green Gardening Guide lists things you should consider when making/buying a rain barrel, so make sure you know that before you proceed. Want to buy even less water for your garden? Use gray water. Have a bucket in your shower that captures the water that comes out before it's hot. Have a bucket in your kitchen sink for when you're washing vegetables. Empty these buckets into your rain barrel & "VOILA! " even more free water.

Now, plants...you've got your free sunlight, soil and water...what about plants? First off, if you're wanting to garden on the cheap (and don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of time tending your garden), PLANT WHAT WANTS TO LIVE THERE. Plants are like cats...you're not going to be able to get them to do anything they don't want to do. If the plant likes full sun, don't put it in shade, it will be more prone to pests, won't perform very well, and you'll be constantly fighting an uphill battle. Instead, plant something that thrives in shade! You won't have to deal with pests (plants are also like people: if it's healthy, it can fight off an invader better than if it's sick) and it will be almost maintenance free. I mean, there are not pesticides going on in the rain forest & stuff seems to get growing well in there...

Trust me, I have learned this the hard way. Spending a lot of time trying to convince a dahlia it might like part-sun, only for it to be covered with powdery mildew and produce all of 2 flowers before it decided to die was not fun. It was frustrating, in fact. And time consuming. So, if you don't have full sun in your yard, don't even wander over to that side of the nursery. Embrace your part-sun (or shade) -ness!

And, you can get free plants. How do I know? I just got some last weekend via Freecycle. In spring & fall, you'll see lots of posts from people dividing their hostas, liriope, daffodils, etc. or riping up bushes they don't want. You may need to dig them up, but that's a small price to pay for free plants! So, join your local Freecycle today!

Another idea? Starting plants from seeds. There might be a bit of start up costs if you're not blessed to have a sunny window or a warm climate, but those are just a one-time thing. Wanna go even cheaper? Seed swap with friends and neighbors. Or exchange cuttings. Many plants (basil & mint definitely come to mind) can be propagated by placing cutting in water (like what I did with my ivy trellis project).

In short, getting down to the "roots" of gardening, really organic gardening, isn't expensive. In fact, it can be waaaaayy cheaper than conventional gardening since you depend less on fertilizers and pesticides, both of which can be pricey AND it can be waaaaayy less time consuming since you're planting what will grow in a spot rather than what you WANT to grow in that spot.

Food for thought.



(hahahhahhahahaha! I crack myself up! hehehehe)