Organic Garden Created...

...With Very Little Preparation - no signs of bugs - everyone raved about the sweetness!
[Click here to see the horticulturist whose guidance our friend and organic gardener followed.]

Here is my summary of each photo [as our organic garden was created]:
garden prep - Mid-March 2010: Very little preparation needed (about two hours worth!) for a 6 X 6 1/2 foot space. We left some sticks and weeds, did no digging . . . put up a small bamboo fence to hold things in place. In the photo: we laid down some weed-stop cloth that we already had, then covered the planting area with newsprint (I used some art newsprint, too).













garden with straw - This was taken of me after we had completed the layers. What you see is the top layer of straw; down the middle, we laid a few stepping stones on top of the weed-stop cloth.


















lettuce; celery - Mid May, 2010 - This was the tastiest celery! It continues to grow; I am still using it (March of 2011) in my juice. Besides the lettuce that you see here, in this bed we've so far grown butter lettuce, romaine, kale, bok choi, parsley, chives, dill, and three cucumber plants. To the right, you can see the ripening cherry tomatoes. The lettuce was a little bitter at times (I think this was due in part to my not knowing when to replace plants.) I don't eat the lettuce myself, but other family members do.

Garden in June - This tomato plant was prolific, and the fruit delicious. In the background, you see our dwarf Anna apple tree. To the right is one of the cucumber plants, mixing with a volunteer Nasturtium.

In the fall, I added some compost and planted a few bok choi and lettuce plants. Besides picking them for eating, I did very little to care for these through the winter. Last week we harvested much of it for a 3-day event with a potluck each day. Everyone raved about the sweetness of the bok choi and lettuce, and wanted to know what kind of garden I had. And my two celery plants are still producing (for nearly a full year, we have harvested from our own garden one cup worth of juice of the six cups we make every few days!)

During the last year, I have not weeded nor had any sign of bugs in this garden. I'm now getting ready to buy small plants for my second year garden!

Our friend, G.D. in Ventura, California

organic vegetable gardening: a life necessity

Hello organic gardening fans, I have just had another article published at EzineArticles.com about the benefits and also the necessities of organic fruit and vegetable gardening. It should be viewable within 48 hours.

You are welcome to see this at: http://ezinearticles.com/?Organic-Vegetable-Gardening---How-Necessary-Is-It-In-Your-Life?&id=6216047 and enjoy the reading!

Barbara Ellingson

A Victory for Raw Milk, Supplements, Small Farmers

Anyone who has been following the so called 'Food Safety Bill' S 510 should have a brief summary of the recent history and final defeat of this bill. To know more about the history of underhanded efforts to suppress consumption of raw milk, click here to obtain and learn from the expert report written by Aajonus Vonderplanitz and Dr. William Douglass II.

The house threw out S 510 but put put the wording into another bill which went back to the senate as S 3082. The bill they stuck it in was supposed to be a 'continuing resolution' bill having to do with government expenditures in 2011.

As recently as last Thursday December 16th, it looked like this was going to be passed into law.

As of Friday morning, this bill had been killed and a much simpler continuing resolution bill had been passed which has nothing to do with food safety! This is a victory. It is result of much pressure from citizens who spoke up.

As we must tell our senators and representatives how they are supposed to represent us – call your senator and your representative to tell them to vote NO on any future food safety bill of any sort.

Healthy food choices

Please take an easy and simple action to stop two bills that will really hinder our right to choose healthy foods! With just a week to go until elections, just please click on the link below to alert your senators and the president NOT to support S510 and S3767:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4613

This is SO necessary for our freedoms in choosing the foods we want to eat without (literally) being outlaws!

Thanks for doing this: IT'S EASY.

Barbara Ellingson,

Progress on composting

Composting: we've been at it a month.
Nice to know our kitchen waste is feeding bugs and bacteria
which will then decompose and recycle the waste and feed our plants.

We see little creepy crawlies are going up the sides of the bin.
A perfect example of--build it, and they will come!

From an organic gardening e-book user.

This post is from a satisfied user of the wonderful gardening e-book and videos available at www.organicfoodforless.info.

"I purchased the information from the fellow in Australia and have utilized the information already. My garden was a lot better this year, and every year it should get better.

I'd looked a a lot of stuff and his seemed really great."

D.E., upper New York State.

how to make compost

Well, now I have started a compost pile, with "refuse" that we discard from our kitchen. Though we can't eat the stuff, we know that the plants will love it!

Our compost pile includes the remnants of our daily vegetable juicing (the matted vegetables that are left after we drink the liquid) egg shells, fruit remains even rinds of citrus fruit that we eat. We learned that our compost pile shouldn't be too much of one thing all together, and shouldn't include things like woody plants or bones or coconut shells, etc., which don't decompose readily.

We add to this mixture some leaves from the trees which graciously shed them for us, we just have to collect them and add them to the pile. And given a bit of time let's say four to six weeks, we shall see what happens! All this this I learned from that wonderful product about organic gardening which we purchased at www.organicfoodforless.info. It's all an adventure. I hope you try it too--and by all means, let us know how it goes!