Brummet's Conscious Blog

How Tilling A Garden Causes More Problems Than Benefits   * Today's submitted article was written b y: Phil Nauta is a SOUL Certified Organic Land Care Professional and holds a Certificate In Organic Landscape Management from Gaia College.    Garden tilling, also called cultivating, is often done with a gas-powered rototiller that goes down perhaps 6 or so inches, but soil can be "tilled" with a tool such as a pitch fork, too. As you know, tilling a garden is when you turn the soil over so that some of the lower soil comes up and some of the upper soil goes down. It's kind of like a food processor for your soil, just not as fast. You may think it is more necessary in organic gardening because we don't use pesticides like the no-till farmers, but that isn't the case. Reasons For Garden Tilling The main reasons organic gardeners may till the soil are to: * Reduce weeds * Relieve compaction * Make the soil look f...

-- Quote of the Day --  “Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them”     ~ Hugh Miller -- Conscious Discussions Talk Radio --    * Airs live @ 10-11 AM (Pacifc)  - all episodes are archived indefinitely within moments after they air live, and are available for you to listen to later on at any time of day.   Sign up via itunes for the Conscious Discussions Radio show: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id262138144     Author Joanne Quinn-Smith hosts several talk genre podcasts and is the Creative Energy Officer of Dreamweaver Marketing Associates - a marketing company specializing in Web 2.0 Gorilla Branding. Known as the Techno Granny she offers her clients unique, creative and energetic marketin...

-- Growing Communities -- Looking for a way to get your youth group or young family members involved in the community and learning about growing food in their own back yards... or balconies? Here's a great way to do this and at the same time support food banks, missions for the poor or churches that feed the hungry. Check out the www.growarow.org site where you can learn about a junior vegetable gardening & sharing initiative for children and their families – sponsored by the Garden Writers Association, Food Banks Canada and the Composting Council of Canada – Learn how you can get your kids involved in this project for the upcoming growing season simply by following the hyper-link above. -- Conscious Composting Innovation -- Cavendish Farms , one of North America's leading producers of potato products, have recently installed a bio-gas facility that converts solid potato waste to energy for the processing plants located on the farm site - resulting in 30% less greenhouse ...

-- Quote of the Day -- "In the past 3 years (1991-94) 950 varieties of vegetables have become extinct and of the survivors 74% - or almost 4,000 varieties - are endangered." ~ Ann Rodes article: 'The Seed Savers', Canadian Gardening Magazine -- Gardening for Life -- article © Lillian Brummet Have you ever noticed how happy and centered gardeners tend to be? Could it be from communing with nature, sharing nutrient-rich harvests with others, or knowing that every increased amount of greenery helps battle the environmental problems our world faces? For me, playing in the dirt - as I often refer to gardening - is just that. Play time, time for meditation and to listen to the birds. Yet, gardening can mean so much more. For many years, my family has been dedicated to preserving rare and endangered garden seeds. We tried the hybrids, but after a while we realized they were just not performing like the old varieties. Whether it was small yields or poor tolerance to heat wa...