Hover mouse over photograph for name and photo credit. Many more photos below!

Four guests, representatives and owners of one organization and three companies that sell heirloom and organic seeds, tell us about a few of their many seeds: new ones, undervalued ones, and personal favorites. But first, I hold forth at greater length than usual about some of the terms that you’ll encounter when perusing catalogs or websites in search of organic and sustainable seeds.

Okay, I have a confession: I am not a seed catalog addict. I do not pour over new arrivals, cultivars, and varieties, or old favorites, tried and true heirlooms, prolific producers, dependable bearers of heavy yields, whatever. Truth to tell, I didn’t really care.

After doing this week’s show, I do.

I mean, look at those pictures up there. Don’t they make your mouth water? That’s just four items, one from each guest. And each talked about maybe a total of five fruits, vegetables, or flowers. And each company carries hundreds.

I asked each of the four about seeds that were new this season,  about things that got no respect but definitely deserved some, and about their personal favorites. Along the way, we also talked about the philosophy, values, and goals of each company or organization.

Now I hope you’ll excuse me; I need to go order seeds for yellow strawberries, ground cherries, Antago lettuce (it looks like a pink froth), and

Organica on facebook
Heirloom, untreated seeds; orders hand-filled; organic methods though not certified

Jim started the online seed business only about ten years ago, but he’s no newcomer to farming. In fact, he and his crew grow much of the seed on land that’s been farmed by his family for a hundred and fifty years. His catalog includes colored cottons, tobacco, coffee, and rice as well as flowers, vegetables, and both medicinal and culinary herbs.

Surprising facts:
– You can grow rice in your back yard without a rice paddy, and get enough grain to make it worth the effort. Who’d'a thunk it.
– Cotton, too, can be a back-yard crop, and you can get enough fibre from a few plants to spin and weave.
– And it comes in colored varieties. (!)
– Yellow strawberries not only exist, but they’re delicious, and birds ignore them.
– You can plant (some) strawberries and blueberries from seed and get fruit the same season.

Seeds discussed: cotton, rice, red and yellow alpine strawberries, blueberries, hot peppers. A few of the varieties Jim offers are pictured below. From left to right, these are Long Red Cayenne, Fatalii, Anaheim TMR, Habanero Red, Habanero, Jalapeno Early, and   All images from organicaseedco.com.

High Mowing on Facebook
Certified organic; both heirlooms and hybrids.

Tom grew up gardening and started saving and sharing seeds the summer that GMOs were first approved for agricultural use. His Director of Research and Production, Jodi Lew-Smith, works with Brent Loy of the University of New Hampshire to develop flavorful, disease-resistant, short-season varieties and cultivars that flourish under organic conditions.

What I learned:
– Tom wrote the Save Seed Pledge, which you’ll find on the websites of most organic and heirloom seed growers. In it, the company promises not to knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds.
– Short-season crops are especially desirable for organic gardening, as they have less time to be attacked by pests or disease.
– You can grow cantaloupe in Vermont.
– You can overwinter spinach in an unheated greenhouse where temperatures dip to 25 degrees below zero.

Seeds discussed: Lettuce (pictured: Antago),Tang tomato, Palco spinach, Sivan melon, and Runner Leek. All images from highmowingseeds.com.

Southern Exposure on Facebook
Certified organic seed handler; many offerings are certified; heirlooms

Ira is a member of an “intentional community” that works and owns Southern Exposure together. She co-ordinates the seed collection for their catalogs, as well as writing and speaking about seeds and seed-saving. A board member of the Organic Seed Alliance for several years, Ira is now also on the board of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), the leaders of the lawsuit being brought by organic farmers and organizations against Monsanto, which produces 90% of the world’s GMO seeds.

– There exist over 20 varieties of okra. Probably lots more, as Southern Exposure alone carries 20.
– Ground cherries are Solanaceae–related to peppers and tomatoes.
– There is such a thing as “greasy beans,” so-called because their pods are hairless.

Seeds discussed: Tina James Evening Primrose, collard greens, okra, ground cherries, and greasy beans. Below, from left to right, you see several okras: Star of David, Alabama Red, Burgundy, and Stewart Zeebest. All images from southernexchange.com.

Seed Savers on Facebook

Heirlooms, non-profit, many organic varieties; memberships available, with benefits; member-to-member sales possible through the Yearbook

Though relatively new to Seed Savers, John is a dedicated gardener who takes full advantage of the experts on hand. He told me the stories behind several SSE seeds, including that of Emmy tomato, whose story involves an escape from Romania, and a gift. Though a brand new offering this season, it is already sold out.

Things I learned:
– The core of Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is the Yearbook, through which SSE enables member-to-member sales.
– John especially recommends Seed to Seed (Second Edition) by Suzanne Ashworth, for seed-saving advice.
– The Moon and Stars watermelon is aptly named. Amazing.

 Seeds discussed: Emmy tomato, Children’s Seed Collection, Gold of Bacau bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) Nicola potato, and Moon and Stars watermelon (Citrullus lanatus)

The Show: Water-Wise Gardening

Tom Christopher

Guests: Thomas Christopher – author, lecturer, gardener - on how and why to save water in the home garden.
Edwin Beck – entrepreneur, designer, consultant, gardener - on a rain barrel, EarthMinded RainStation, that’s even more environmentally friendly than most.

And while we’re on the subject– How do you save water in your garden? Add your ideas and experiences to the comments below.

image from Timber Press

The statistics in Tom’s introduction to The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening are enough to make you want to fall on your pitchfork in the gardener’s version of the old Roman custom of falling on one’s sword when the battle was clearly lost.

Now some of these stats, I’d seen before–for instance the fact that about 30% of water used by residences goes to water lawns and gardens. But the claim that 36 states would face chronic water shortages by 2013? That’s next year. This was a new one on me. And the fact that Southern Florida, which gets 55 inches of rain, has a water shortage? How could this be? (If you don’t believe these are facts, please feel free to take it up with the EPA and the Gov’t Accounting Office, a.k.a. the GOA.)

Given such statistics, how did Tom manage to avoid is own pitchfork, much less encourage us to avoid ours?

In the course of this show, Tom explains how he remains hopeful in the face of such numbers. It’s a matter of both planting and watering wisely. Tom doesn’t advocate abandoning all lawns, planting only natives, or giving up every water-hungry hybrid. Instead, he helps people convert their lawns to less thirsty grasses. If your taste leans toward the latest cultivar, he advises setting up a special space for such exotics and then doing what you can to reduce water use on it: enclose it to protect it from drying winds, water it in early morning to minimize evaporation, and so on.

I tend towards a more dour, apocalyptic, approach, so it is useful to be reminded, first, that most Americans and Canadians are not going to give up their lawns or their hybrids  this year, and second, that much can be done to save water short of such drastic measures. This is a gentler approach than I’m sometimes inclined to take, and it reminds me that guilt is not an especially good teacher, and that working with people generally gets you further than lambasting them about their failures.

Edwin Beck may be an entrepreneur by trade, but he’s also a back-yard gardener with a real concern for the environment. In designing these rain barrels, he’s braided these three threads together.

Our conversation takes a brief detour to explain the history of the RainStation company–it’s part of Greif, which started as coopers (barrel makers) in about 1880–then focuses on what Edwin and his partners set out to do in designing the RainStation water barrels: make a product that’s better looking, has a smaller environmental footprint, and is easier to set up or use than any other rain barrel. Oh–and it shouldn’t flood your basement, as some apparently do. (Go figure.)

You can listen to our conversation as he explains how he and his colleagues set about accomplishing these ends.

Thomas Christopher

A graduate of the NewYork Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture, Tom gives occasional lectures and seminars both there and around the country. His several books (see below) include the 1998 Water-Wise Gardening, which testifies that sustainable gardening has long been one of his major interests and concerns. Several years ago he gave up being a garden columnist for the uncertainties of full-time writing.

One result is The New American Landscape, which features chapters on sustainable ideas for the backyard gardener (David Deardorff & Kathryn Wadsworth), meadows (John Greenlee with Neil Diboll), balancing natives and exotics (Rick Darke), green roofs (Edmund C. Snodgrass and Linda McIntyre), gardening to attract wildlife (Douglas Tallamy) and more.

Edwin Beck

Edwin has his own company, Big Red Rooster, but also acts as a consultant for EarthMinded, the makers of RainStation water barrels, which he helped design. He’s also a dedicated gardener, and is convinced that the potted tomatoes on his patio, which receive water only from the water barrels, taste better, ripen sooner, and are all-round healthier than the ones in the garden, which receive municipal water. And in case you were wondering, they have the same soil.

The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening (2011)

The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design Tom Christopher, James Van Sweden – Random House Publishing Group (2011)

Architecture in the Garden James van Sweden, tom Christopher. Forward: Penelope Hobhouse. (2003)

Easy Roses For North American Gardens (2002)

In Search of Lost Roses (2002)

Water-Wise Gardening: America’s Backyard Revolution (1998)

EarthMinded RainStation – water barrels

Big Red Rooster

USGS “Groundwater Depletion”
–I wish I could highlight a few key facts from this document, including one that Tom cites in the course of the interview: that water levels in Tuscon and Phoenix have fallen between 300 and 500 feet. But that doesn’t touch the situation in Chicago, where “long-term pumping has lowered groundwater levels by as much as 900 feet.” This not from the level-headed United States Geological Survey (USGS).

“Landscaping with Less Water” Kate Galbraith, NY Times, June 12, 2011
–Discusses attempts to implement water-saving practices at parks as disparate as The Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, Britain, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin,Texas.

I remember two things in particular about the first time a friend showed me a book on composting: first of all, I was dumbfounded that anyone could find enough to say on the topic to fill a book; and secondly, I had no temptation to read it.

How things change. I’ve now read several books and probably hundreds of articles on composting, and I find the topic endlessly engrossing. So much so that I’ve added my own book-length article to the stack. (Check out the green table of contents on the left at Composter Connection. Yeah, the one that kinda goes on and on.)

The thing is, once you do get interested in compost and actually try to learn about it in any detail, you realize how inadequate most web resources are. Over and over you’ll run into claims that compost “buffers soil pH” or that it “increases soil cation exchange capacity,” but you’ll almost always have to go to other sites in order to figure out what these things mean.

Cornell University’s composting site was a rare and welcome exception to this rule. It includes a remarkably thorough and readable treatment of compost science for the non-scientist as well as all sorts of more detailed scientific information for farmers and people with a real scientific background.

Its lead author and architect, Tom Richard, joins me this week from Penn State, along with his colleague Rick Stehouwer. Tom suggested that we include Rick when I said that I wanted to explore not just the science of composting, but what goes on when we use the stuff. Rick has written a four-part series of articles about what compost does in soil—chemically, physically, and biologically. These articles, published in BioCycle from 2003-4, are probably the best I’ve seen written for the intelligent layperson, for they’re both thorough and accessible.

This show, then, is for those of you with curious minds but not enough time. We couldn’t do the topic justice in an hour, but we did hit some high points. With luck, the program will whet some appetites.

Tom Richard
Director, Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment
Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Pennsylvania State University

Rick Stehouwer
Professor of Environmental Soil Science, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences
Pennsylvania State University

Cornell Composting Science and Engineering
—This may look impossibly intimidating, and indeed much of it is beyond the needs or abilities of most backyard composters. But check out the first section, “Background Information.” Its four pages—Invertebrates, Microbes, Chemistry, and Physics—cover a lot of territory, in accessible language.

Cornell Composting Fact Sheets
—Again, much of this is way more information than any backyard composter needs or wants, but the Home Composting section (fourth down) offers several useful downloadable files for the non-specialist.

Penn State Backyard Composting: http://extension.psu.edu/backyard-composting (downloadable pdf)

Penn State Composting Powerpoint Presentation: http://cropsoil.psu.edu/documents/stehouwer/composting2.ppt (downloadable pdf)

Soil Quality Fundamentals
—This is a four-part series by Richard Stehouwer. Originally published in BioCycle, these articles can be obtained free only by getting them through Highbeam’s 7-day introductory offer, so the links below are to Highbeam.

Part I: The Impact of Organics
Part II: Air and Water Essentials
Part III: Soil Chemistry and the Quality of Humus
Part IV: The Biology of Soils

Meadow Zelenitz-McCracken, The Bozeman Chronicle, Jan. 14, 2012

I had to blink once or twice when I saw this photo in Saturday’s paper. I mean, that 65 pound monster was grown here in Bozeman. By a third grader. I bet it outweighs her.

You can read the article in the Bozeman Chronicle, or join me in my room, where you’ll find me sobbing under my bed. The aptly named Meadow grew not only the largest cabbage in this year’s Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program, but the largest ever grown in the program.

Clearly, Meadow has a great future as a gardener. Me, I’m going to retire.

I didn’t know the setup when we started watching: two recent college graduates (Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis) get their hair analyzed (!), learn they’re “made of corn,” and decide to go back to the Iowa town both their grandfathers had farmed in years before, and grow an acre of corn. The movie’s partly about the people they meet and the work they learn to do (they’re city kids from Boston), but as it goes on, it’s more and more about the industry itself.

Ian and Curtis learn that the sudden burgeoning of corn began in the ’70s, when then Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz  (whom they interview) presided over the deregulation of that and other crops, with the result that profits fell, and farmers had to grow more and more to stay in the business at all. Corn was bred to tolerate close spacing. It’s nutritional value fell, but suddenly, we were swimming in the stuff. (You should see the piles, like dunes. They even climb them like dunes.)

That was the beginning of the corn fructose industry, which transforms a crop with low nutritional value into one with none. The byproducts from the fructose industry–the solids left over after the “juice” has been squeezed out–are used as cattle feed, so Ian and Curtis go look at feed lots. Here’s one tasty tidbit: a feedlot with a hundred thousand head produces as much waste as a city of over a million.

And here’s another: the high corn diet makes cattle gain weight much faster than the old-fashioned grass diet, but it isn’t good for them. It causes stomach ulcers and other problems and would kill them if they weren’t slaughtered within a few months.

Oh, and here’s yet another: a steak from corn-fed beef contains perhaps 9 grams of fat. The same-sized steak from a grass-fed cow contains less than one and a half. (I think it was 1.2.)

It’s when one of the experts being interviewed drops a fact like that one that Ian and Curtis exchange glances. Often we see only one face, but the  look is always startled, a bit befuddled. This is an exposé with a light touch.

Even so, my eyes were rolling in my head by the end, and I am vowing, once again, to stay away from mass-produced meats. Aside from the fact that I’m sorry for animals sickened by their diet, I have to wonder what effect it has on human health to be eating meat from an animal that isn’t well.

I did have some unanswered questions, like, where the heck did these guys live during their time in Iowa, and what did they live on? The closing credits mention grants, but nothing’s said of those in the course of the movie. A line at the movie’s end credits Michael Pollen for having inspired the project, but again, that’s not mentioned earlier, though they do interview him. Maybe they thought that using his name too early would tip their hand, or alienate their audience.

At any rate, it’s a great movie, chock full of information gently conveyed. And although it’s certainly got an agenda, it isn’t heavy handed. It’s that rare thing, an exposé with a light touch.

You can also check out my original post on the suit, written a couple of days after it was filed last spring, for some background.

In the course of the show, many sins are laid at Monsanto’s feet: that genetically modified crops don’t increase yields as promised, that they may give rise to an organism that causes miscarriages in cattle, that they have fostered a race of super weeds, that Monsanto routinely engages in intimidating tactics, that it has sued thousands of farmers.

In this post, I present a few of the articles I’ve collected that help substantiate these claims. Some of these articles were actually mentioned  by my guests; others were not.

This post is a work in progress; I’ll probably update it more than once.

–updated Dec. 21, 2011: added 3 citations under 2 new categories: GMO Canola Runs Wild and GMOs harm soil rhizosphere.

Jim Gerritsen, President of Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) and owner of Wood Prairie Farm.
—named an Utne Reader Visionary of the Year. See “Jim Gerritsen: Organic Food Champion,” Utne Reader, Nov.-Dec. 2011.

Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director of Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT ), affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
—for more about PUBPAT, patents, patent law, and issues regarding intellectual property, check out the video on the “about” page of the PUBPAT website. It’s of a speech given by Daniel Ravicher at Google Inc. in August of 2008.

“Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent,”  John Schwartz and Andrew Pollack, The New York Times, March 29, 2010.

“Ruling Upholds Gene Patent in Cancer Test,” NY Times, July 29, 2011.

“Divided Appeals Court Rules That Companies May Patent Breast Cancer Genes, but  Invalidates Patents on Comparing the Genes,”  ACLU online, July 29, 2011.

“Wafting poison makes fertile ground for suit in Stearns County,” by Josephine Marcotty, Minneapolis Star Tribune Updated: July 26, 2011.

“Why Aren’t G.M.O. Foods Labeled?” Mark Bittman, NY Times, February 15, 2011

“Further Reading on Genetic Engineering and Food,” Mark Bittman, NY Times, Feb. 18, 2011
—this gives what Bittman calls “some of the most interesting articles” he consulted for the article above.

“Genetic Engineering No Match for Evolution of Weed Resistance,” by Gayathri Vaidyanathan and Climatewire, Scientific American, April 14, 2010.
–”A new report finds weed resistance to pesticides growing alongside genetically engineered crops–highlighting a need for better farming practices.”

“Genetic Engineering Has Failed to Significantly Boost U.S. Crop Yields Despite Biotech Industry Claims,” Union of Concerned Scientist April 14, 2009.

“Canadian GM canola escapes into wild: study” Margaret Munro, Leader Post (Regina)Postmedia News October 6, 2011
“Genetically Modified Crop on the Loose and Evolving in U.S. Midwest” David Biello,  Scientific American, August 6, 2010
—“ GM canola plant refugees from farms in North Dakota bear multiple transgenic traits.”

“Microbial diversity in wheat rhizosphere as affected by genetically modified Pseudmonas putida WCS358r” (PDF) Mareike Viebahn et al, IOBC Bulletin, Vol. 29 (2) 2006 167-172.

—first sentence: “ Introduction of genetically modified micro-organisms (GMOs) in the environment can lead to perturbations of soil ecosystems.”

“Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops Contain Organism Causing Animal Miscarriages, Scientist Says,” Joanna Zelman, The Huffington Post, Feb. 23, 2011.

“Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear,”  Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Vanity Fair, May 2008.
–the article mentioned by Jim Gerritsen, about Monsanto’s tactics of intimidation.

“Monsanto Successfully Intimidates Missouri Farmers for ‘Crime’ of Seed Saving,” Organic Consumer’s Association from St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via TradingMarkets.com, September 2, 2008
–“Monsanto, Missouri co-op reach settlement on seed use.”

“Monsanto Sues Dairy in Maine Over Label’s Remarks on Hormones,” David Barboza, NYTimes, July 12, 2003.

“Monsanto Successfully Intimidates Missouri Farmers for ‘Crime’ of Seed Saving,” Organic Consumer’s Association from St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via TradingMarkets.com, September 2, 2008
–“Monsanto, Missouri co-op reach settlement on seed use.”

“Monsanto vs. Pilot Grove Coop: protecting patents or bullying farmers?” Alan Scher Zagier/The Associated Press The Missourian, July 10, 2008, July 22, 2008.

“Monsanto guilty in ‘false ad’ row,” BBC News, Oct. 29, 2009

—“France’s highest court has ruled that US agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup.”

“Monsanto agrees to pay fine of $2.5 million,” Associated Pr., St Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 2010.
—“Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed maker, agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine for failing to disclose to buyers of its insect-killing cotton seed that the product wasn’t approved for planting in certain parts of Texas.”

“Justice Department Investigates Possible Monsanto Monopoly,” Frank Morris, NPR All Things Considered, Jan 14, 2010.

“Monsanto’s Higher Income Clouded by S.E.C. Inquiry,” Reuters NY Times, June 29, 2011.
—“The company has been offering farmers who use Monsanto products cash incentives to help them battle weeds that have grown resistant to Monsanto’s glyphosate products, namely Roundup.”

“Monsanto, Bayer and Dow face trial for ‘systematic human rights abuses’,” Matilda Lee, The Ecologist, 16th November, 2011
—a largely symbolic “trial” brought by the Permanent People’s Tribunal, from Dec. 3-6, 2011, in Bangalore, India.

It’s not the first time I’ve stayed up all night putting the podcast to bed; this fall I’ve probably been up more Tuesday nights than I’ve slept. But this was a bigger deal than most. This was a show about the suit brought by organic farmers, seed growers, and organizations against Monsanto, the seed company that keeps suing farmers whose fields become contaminated with its genetically modified–and patented–seeds.

Last spring, this group of organic folks sued the suer, trying to ensure that if their fields are contaminated, at least Monsanto won’t sue them. (You can read my post, News flash! Organic farmers take on Monsanto for more information.) This fall, rather to my astonishment, two prominent figures in the suit agreed to interviews with me.

Jim Gerritsen, an organic farmer in northern Maine, is president of OSGATA, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, which is at the forefront of the suit. Daniel Ravicher is the lead lawyer in the suit, and Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation, or PUBPAT.

You’ll be able to hear them both on next week’s podcast, “Turning the Tables: Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto.”  It should be up sometime on Monday.

The article, which appeared in the N.Y. Times a couple of Sundays back (Dec. 3, 2011), describes how companies that provide food for school lunches are getting rich turning simple, healthy ingredients into junk food.  How can this be? In “How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch,” investigative reporter Lucy Komisar explains all, in an article packed with relevant stats and useful links. I’m giving no more than a summary here.

The National School Lunch Program provides free and low-cost surplus food to schools, which then provide free and reduced cost meals to students across the U.S. But according to Komisar, the program has been hijacked. The numbers are astounding, the practices outrageous, and the accounting minimal.

Running the Numbers
The National School Lunch Program
- provides low-cost or free meals to about 21 million students.
- costs $13.3 billion a year.

Processors
- in Michigan convert free ($0) chicken worth $11.40 a case into nuggets worth $33.45 a case.
- in San Bernardino, Calif., convert potatoes worth $5.95 into French fries worth $14.75.

And one last statistic:
- One-third of children from the ages of 6 to 19 are overweight or obese.

How it Works
Instead of cooking the chickens, potatoes, and so on in their own kitchens and setting the apples out as–well, apples–many schools send the whole lot off to be processed into nuggets, french fries, and pastries. Then, (apparently) they buy it back, at great cost to the program, and to the delight of the processing companies such as Aramark (Philadelphia), Sodexo (France); and the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, (Britain) which load the original ingredients with sugar, salt, and fat–just the things our young people most need.

Except it isn’t precisely the schools that send the food off and then buy it back, because many schools, desperate to cut costs, farm out the meal programs to management companies. (Yes, it’s the middle man.) And guess what? Those management companies get “rebates” for signing contracts with the processing companies. (Funny; these rebates sound a lot like kickbacks. Legal ones. Mostly: New York just won a $20 million settlement against Sodexo for not sharing the rebates with the schools. Now the US Dept. of Agriculture is investigating.)

The Consequences
It’s obvious that these practices would injure students’ health. But as  Komisar makes clear, they also cause a host of other problems. They reduce local control over school meal plans, and  they move food jobs from unionized to non-unionized workers. Not only that, but it appears that they may lower students’ test scores.

There’s one thing they don’t do. They don’t lower costs.

I’m honestly not sure what I was up to when I stumbled onto Jerome Osentowski’s Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, which more or less blew my mind. Four greenhouses, and no power needed from off-site? Figs and passion fruit growing at over 7,000 feet? Hello?

My interview with Jerome didn’t answer all my questions—I had to look up what a climate battery is—but I’ll tell you, after hearing him describe the multiple purposes served by his paths, I’m going to redesign mine. I hate wasted space. My paths aren’t wide enough to support big plants in barrels, and they’re not long enough to serve as an archery range, but pallets above organic matter to feed the worms? That I have got to try. Except my paths will need the two-foot-wide version of pallets. Got to work on that.

It may have been even more exciting to find someone doing permaculture right here in my backyard (I wish)—here in Bozeman, anyway. I did get to walk through my backyard with Kareen Erbe of Broken Ground Permaculture, and I got to watch her at work in someone else’s backyard, but the core of our time together was our conversation in my living room, where she answered my questions about permaculture in remarkably clear, eloquent language. It really was one of the most engaging conversations I’ve had in quite a while.

I’m not a complete convert–I have real trouble with permaculture’s willingness to bring in alien species. But more on that another time. For now, suffice it to say, it was a revelation.

Guests:
Jerome Osentowski
CRMPI (Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute)
–lots of info here
The Living Permaculture Show (KDNK Colorado, 4th Wed. of each month at 4:30).

Kareen Erbe
Broken Ground:  Permaculture Education and Edible Garden Design

More Information about Permaculture:
Permaculture Activist (magazine)

The show is an hour a week on organic and sustainable gardening, (you can find it here) interviewing everyone from a neighbor to Linda Chalker-Scott, one of the esteemed Garden Professors and former science editor of the alas now defunct Master Gardener Magazine. No one’s safe: not the local organic potato farmer, not his wife, not a Bokashi blogger in Switzerland.

And yet, I like to pretend, at least to myself, that there is some sort of organization behind it all, or underneath. After a certain amount of delving, here are the five major foci I’ve unearthed:

How-tos:
This one’s a no-brainer: the nuts and bolts of organic gardening. How to set up a compost heap (or a worm farm, or a Bokashi operation); what each of those finished composts does or doesn’t provide in the soil; how to plant a vegetable garden (or a fruit tree, or a flower garden) to minimize diseases and pests; how to recognize and cope with problems; what parts of companion planting are based in reality and what in wishful thinking.

The big stuff:
At the other end of the scale, I want to deal with the wider issues related to organic practices: the research that ties pesticide exposure to both Parkinson’s and the rise in non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, the dead zone in the Caribbean that’s largely caused by fertilizer run-off from the Mississippi, the manure lagoons that exist in part because animals in North America are treated with so many antibiotics and hormones that their manure can’t be used as fertilizer. Grrr.

Going organic:
As the bad news about pesticides and conventional farming spreads, plenty of gardeners and farmers would like to make their operations  more sustainable. But many don’t know how to go about it. So what are some steps that a responsible grower can take? Check out “Steps Towards Sustainability,” in which I interview Jason Kimm, a conventional seed-potato farmer who isn’t so conventional any more.

Community action:
A lot of us would also like to see more sustainable practices established in our towns, neighborhoods, or counties, but it isn’t always obvious what can be done at a reasonable cost by busy people. So I plan to take a look at successful organic gardening  organizations, institutes, and programs that might be useful models for the rest of us. (In “Big Bokashi,” up next week (Oct. 24), MJ Arendes and Michael Dalton talk about how they’ve set up large-scale Bokashi composting bins at food banks, schools, and other institutions.)

Garden Science:
And so we arrive at my last focus: the science of gardening. While writing my research articles for Eric Vinge of Planet Natural, I constantly found myself confronting bald statements of “fact,” unsupported by any actual facts. I’ve done enough bouncing around on the web to know how easily misinformation can be promulgated. And being of a naturally suspicious disposition, I want to see the research behind the claim. Assuming there are others out there as curious and skeptical as I am, I’m trying to get some real science into these shows.

Whew.

As you can imagine, it’s been a pretty wild. And I haven’t even mentioned all the stuff I’ve had to learn about microphones, recording programs and—oh boy—editing.

But that’s a different post.