One of the great things about gardening — in addition to creating beautiful landscapes and delicious, healthy food — is its educational opportunities. Your friendly Planet Natural blogger has gardened on and off since my childhood some (garbled) years ago and I learn something new almost every time I pick up a how-to book, talk to a companion gardener, or get my hands in the dirt. Best are the things that I once knew nothing about and, as I explore them further, result in deepening levels of understanding and wonder. Current example? Mycorrhiza.
Mycorrhizal fungi are beneficial soil organisms that attach themselves to the roots of plants — almost 95% of the world’s growing things have a symbiotic reationship with mycorrhiza – and help them facilitate the uptake of water and nutrients. I first came aware of mycorrhizal fungi when pursuing hydroponic gardening a few years back. Hydroponic gardeners add mycorrhizal fungi innoculants to their growing solutions to encourage quick and vibrant growth. Some soil boosters also contain them. That’s good as far as it goes. (more…)
We’re a little lost this time of year when it comes to gardening. Sure there’s plenty else to do and our indoor plants provide just enough green contact to keep us in touch with growing things. But looking out over a mulch or snow-covered garden gets us a bit anxious to get outside and start gardening again. What to do in the meantime?
It’s been over a year since I moved from Montana to the sunny and somewhat warmer (or considerably, depending on the day) climes of Northern New Mexico. Despite the passing of those 13 months, I still mourn the loss of my rosemary. After all, we’d grown close considering all the time I’d spent moving them around, indoors and out, to avoid the coldest weather but to guarantee they had enough sun. They provided many a sprig or just a flat leaf or three (
Yesterday after the big feast, your friendly and conservation-minded Planet Natural Blogger noticed something he notices every year at Thanksgiving: how much food is being discarded. The abundance made me think of all the foodstuff that becomes waste and how much 
Did you know that turkey manure is one hot fertilizer with 
It’s never to early to start thinking about those holiday gifts you’ll be buying even if, like your friendly Planet Natural Blogger, you’re a last minute shopper. (Remember… we said we’re only thinking about holiday gifts… the buying still comes last minute.) Because we ascribe to the idea that knowledge is power, especially when it comes to gardening, we often choose books to give to our nearest and dearest. Here’s a new book that we think is especially suited for, well, just about anyone. Tovah Martin’s 
We think of gardening as a never-ending learning process. Just when something makes sense, we learn something new — or remember some detail we’d forgotten — and suddenly, Doh!… we feel like Homer Simpson. Such is the case with composting leaves. We used to have so many. We’d heap up our compost piles and spread them over our garden. One not-so-bright day in November we decided that if we turned them into the soil they wouldn’t blow around as much. And, come spring, they’d decompose faster into the soil, enriching it with mineral-rich humus. Win-win!
Not so many years ago, my brother-in-law, a Nebraska farmer, made a discovery. The well from which his family pulled their water, a source that had served his family for generations, was 
We had the first snowfall of the year here in Northern New Mexico this weekend. The mountains are blanketed and long patches of the white stuff remain in the shadows of the pines and junipers here at the relatively modest elevation of 7,200 feet. Of course, further north in the Rockies, they’ve already had plenty — thanks, Brutus — as well as in the plains. New England has been 
What to make of the defeat in California of Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative? When all across America, voters seemed to ignore the hundreds-of–millions of dollars thrown at important races by Super PACs and other unrestrained donations, the voters of California — or at least a significant percentage of them — took the onslaught of negative ads to heart.
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