August 9th, 2011

John Dromgoole, owner of “The Natural Gardener” in Austin, has been advising folks on how to go natural and organic in the garden for a couple decades.

Not only does organic gardening save the wider environment, it’s critical to keeping our home turf, our kids, our pets and ourselves healthier. Watch the first part of our conversation with Dromgoole in which he talks about the dangers of pesticides, the growing popularity of organic gardening and the wisdom of letting nature work in harmony in our gardens. We visited with Dromgoole in his garden and store, a vast spread of demonstration plots bursting with butterfly food, culinary herbs, produce, native plants, succulents and whimsical garden decor.

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April 7th, 2010

Those tomatoes are looking good. Your compost is top-notch, you’ve added extra manure for a nitrogen boost and the aphids have been blasted away with a strong spray of water. The grass-clipping mulch has smothered any weeds, and there are no spotted leaves or blossom-end rot to be seen.

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March 15th, 2010

By Chris Reinolds

Composting can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. From piling green and brown things in a corner of the yard

Compost bins need aeration, like this metal mesh enclosure. (Photo: Bureau of Environmental Services, Howard County, Md.)

to buying that perfect compost bin, you’ll generate the same end result. Those of us who turn and nurture our piles can expect more compost in a faster time period, but regardless our gardens will benefit from a little or a lot.

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March 2nd, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

We are often hardest on those we like. It’s because our disappointment is somehow greater when we’ve been conditioned to expect better.

Like when your once cuddly child becomes a teenager. Or your beloved hairdresser turns your hair green. Cognitive dissonance sets in, followed by betrayal, followed by disappointment (and in the case of the green hair, mortification.)

And so it was last year when I went to Lowe’s for my usual spring garden supplies — a humble gallon of vinegar weed treatment, several bags of organic mulch, some greensand etc. I count on Lowe’s to have these things. This time, though, I also was looking for a second rain barrel.

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November 16th, 2009

By Chris Reinolds
Green Right Now

Beekeeper Laura Johnson enjoys tending to her buzzing friends, but the real motive behind her hobby is stopping the decline of honey bees.

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder has been threatening bees, and the crops they serve, around the world for the past several years.

So Johnson, an organic gardener in suburban Atlanta, decided it was time to jump into honey.

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July 6th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Here’s a tip from fellow blogger Obama Foodorama: Take a quick eco-detour while visiting the National Mall this summer and check out the USDA’s gardens and garden workshops.

USDA staff will be conducting noontime mini-seminars on Fridays at The People’s Garden, installed outside the Ag Department headquarters. Topics will deal with watering, window gardens, attracting wildlife to the garden and of course, the ever-popular and more-work-than-we’d-like-it-to-be composting. You can see the schedule in this USDA press release.

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April 29th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The bunnies are bountiful in our backyard this year; they’re large and prolific. They’re rabbits.

So it was with an eye out for trouble that we installed the garden this past weekend. This is a second veggie garden, which we put in to test the Evo Organics handy-dandy Weed Free Garden Watering Blanket.

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April 1st, 2009

Here are some of the most popular organic gardening titles from Amazon.com:

The Informed Gardener — Linda Chalker-Scott

In this introduction to sustainable landscaping practices, Linda Chalker-Scott addresses the most common myths and misconceptions that plague home gardeners and horticultural professionals. Chalker-Scott offers invaluable advice to gardeners gardeners who have wondered:

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April 16th, 2008

By Barbara Kessler Mary Bakatsa is “organic all the way” in her sprawling Austin garden. But that doesn’t mean she simply avoids pesticides and blithely sits back to watch. Organic gardening is more proactive and veteran gardener Bakatsa runs dozens of schemes to nudge nature in the right direction. She places certain plants near others [...]

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March 3rd, 2007

By Barbara Kessler You’ve decided to grow vegetables in your under-used backyard. It seems like a worthy goal; it’s green; it’s productive and you’d get some tasty treats for your efforts. But here’s the rub, you feel like a dork poking around the garden center, trying to pick your way around the chemicals to find [...]

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