Like it or not, here comes autumn and its bounty of leaves, garden refuse, and other compostable materials. If you’re just getting into composting — or your bin or tumbler won’t hold all of fall’s organic bounty — it’s time to think big. Large composting piles or bins — and a little patience — will reward you down the road with more compost. And that means more benefits for your lawn and garden.
Big compost bins need to do more than just hold large quantities of compostable materials. They need to breathe, provide easy access for turning, and be located close to where you’ll be using your compost. And it must be remembered that large amounts of materials will take a longer period of time. We like to think in terms of threes, since, in our experience, these really large heaps take three years, more or less, to turn to rich soil amendment. The three-bin compost bin, often left open in the front seems perfect. Fresh materials are put in the first bin and are turned into the second after several months. The half-way materials in the second bin are then turned into the third bin where they can be harvested as needed. (more…)
Via the Nation of Change website, we learn that Monsanto has 
No doubt your gardens are at their best now, full to bursting with plants and vegetables, draped with flowers and struggling ahead of the coming frosts to seed and put on growth. Come the dead of winter, we love to recall them this way, in all their green glory. And often, as we plan our next garden, we struggle to remember the details of their opulence after the garden has been put to bed and mulch and snow cover everything. Just where did we plant that row of peas?
Our wonderful, year-round Farmers Market here in Santa Fe, NM is at its peak. Strolling around its grounds and inside its 
Everyone knows how great worms are for soil. They increase your soil’s porous qualities by tunneling, they cluster around decaying matter consuming fungi, bacteria, and nematodes and excreting them as 
Those following the battle to pass California’s Initiative 37 — the bill that will require labeling GMO foods (do we really need to tell you what 
August is the time of year our garden would turn chaotic. Trailing plants like cucumbers and spreading plants such as squash would take over wide swaths of ground that were formerly occupied — if our spring planning was any good — by spinach, lettuce, kale and other greens which, if not harvested would be doing their best to go to seed. These we would pull and throw in the compost… we didn’t care about lettuce seeds compromising our compost and usually the seeds hadn’t dried enough to survive the process. Then, anywhere there was space, we’d sow little squares or circles of late season plantings, things like mache (corn salad), kale, spinach and arugula, especially arugula, or anything else we had left in our seed bin. If there was some bare ground under one of those big shady squash leaves, we’d stir in some seed under them. The worst thing that could happen is that we’d be turning them back into the soil. The best? Picking a salad just before the snow arrived.
Drought has been big news this summer, no more so than regarding its effect on America’s corn crop. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it has put renewed emphasis on corn raised for energy production (ethanol) and the amount that goes into making high-fructose corn syrup with all its 
You already know about 
It’s August and there’s plenty of 
Copyright © 2004-2012