Organic Gardening Products Blog

We have a renaissance going on here in New Zealand - in the rural districts, anyway.  Kiwis are getting back to basics to grow their own vegetables and reduce their living costs.

Up in the North here, this renaissance is being driven by gardening guru and Northtec horticulture tutor Grant Steven.  Grant has introduced his raised-bed garden concept to schools, communities and marae - not just as a theory but by conducting over 20 workshops that show people how to develop raised beds by rolling up sleeves and actually doing it.  Shortly he is going to spread his wings to do similar work around Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island.

His focus is:

• Enjoying an all-year-round supply of super-fresh, highly nutritious food;
• Improving health;
• Saving money;
• Growing organically and tasking back control over what is in the food you eat;
• Making land more productive and attractive;
• Creating permanent mulch, no dig, no weeding gardens.

Now doesn’t that sound attractive - and just what we have been talking about.

To find out more about Grant and what he is doing, and what’s being done elsewhere in the world on similar lines, go to his very informative blog at  http://organoponico.com

I’ve put the link in our sidebar also - enjoy!

Patricia Howitt

Organic Gardening Community on Cagora
http://patriciahowitt.com

Technorati Tags: healthy food, organic, organoponico, saving money

Now Is The Time …   If ever there was a time to dust off your gardening gloves and do something about vegetable gardening, it’s now.  With the wolves of economic recession howling at everyone’s door, times are tough in the business sector, and all of a sudden no-one can be quite sure that they have job security.

If you’ve already felt the bite, then doing something practical to ease your financial situation will not only help make ends meet - it will raise your spirits.  If on the other hand you’re still in a job, then it’s time to get proactive and make some positive changes before you have change thrust upon you.

Growing your own vegetables - especially if you grow them organically - has at least 3 great benefits:

1. You reduce your food bills. Vegetables are not cheap to buy these days - now, wouldn’t it be cool to trim vegetable costs out of your food bill?
2. If you have plenty of veggies available for your family to eat, you’ll be less reliant on fast-food fillers, and expensive meat and fish.  Financial and health benefits there!
3. You improve the quality of what you eat.  Obviously, if you are growing your vegetables organically and eating them straight from the garden, they will offer your body more nutrition than store-bought veggies grown in any old soil and covered in poisonous spray residues.  Not to mention the losses in transportation and storage.

More people are learning that over the last 100 years, our farming practices and chemical fertilizers have drastically impoverished the fertility of soils we rely on to put essential nutrients into our bodies. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky. It was proved and is on record in the minutes and the associated soil testing results of two International Soil Science Symposiums.  Have you noticed how all those ‘wonder juices’ come from untouched-by-man environments where the soils are still nutrient-rich?

The purpose of organic farming and organic gardening is to return to the soil as many as possible of those elements that we have stripped away. To make soil the living  ecosystem it once was.  Gardening and farming organically has got to be good for our planet, and it’s got to be good for us.

Stay tuned for more …

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organic, garden, food production, vegetable, fruit, nutrition, soil fertility, ecosystem

Technorati Tags: economy, nutrition, organic, vegetable