Grow

First Lady Michelle Obama and White House chef Sam Kass tell the story of the first garden on White House grounds since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden during World War II.

It may be cold now, but planting a garden may be a couple of months off, but buying seeds and starting indoor seedlings isn’t far off at all. It doesn’t always occur to those who want to grow their fruits and vegetables organically that they should start off with organic seed. Why start with organic seed? I found two videos that explain why and show you how to identify organic seed. The first is from our friends over at Organic Nation TV. The second I found on 5min.com.

A group that goes by the acronym WWOOF connects urban volunteers interested in natural food production with organic farms in need of help. Business is booming.

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Farmers cultivating organic produce often use winter cover crops to add soil organic matter, improve nutrient cycling and suppress weeds. Now these producers can optimize cover crop use by refining seeding strategies, thanks to work by an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist.

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NORTHFIELD, MINN. -- Pity the chicken in winter. Squeezed
into dark, dusty, rank-smelling quarters with barely enough room to
move, it is truly a "cooped up" creature.

Unless it happens to live at the five-star poultry palace on
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin's farm. This spacious, solar-heated "hoop
house" has a high, translucent-plastic ceiling through which golden
light pours. It smells not of ammonia from poop, but sweet, clean hay.

In short, regardless of the degree to which it’s taken, organic gardens give m

Organic gardeners can discover that common weeds may serve as an asset in the form of edible plants or wildlife food sources.

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Many of you have written to me and wanted to know more about organic
cotton clothes for your babies and young children. Some of you may be
wondering why the concern with cotton, it’s a natural fiber right? Yes,
but despite cotton’s image as being a natural and pure fiber,
conventional cotton farming takes an enormous toll on the air, water,
soil and people who live in cotton growing areas. Pesticide run-off
leaches into our water, and our livestock ingest contaminated cotton
straw and cottonseed in their feed.

Plan your garden for success by putting plants together that benefit each other with similar soil, water and fertilization requirements and avoiding the spread of pests.

It’s awfully tough to make money selling milk. Small dairy farms have been hit particularly hard by the recession, with milk prices at near-historic lows. Still, some farms are fighting the odds. For one family dairy way up in northern Vermont, the way to survive was joining a co-op and going organic.