We get cravings for greens this time of year. Sure, you lucky gardeners with indoor growing systems or hot houses may be eating home-grown kale or lettuce or spinach here in the dead of winter. But what’s a renter without his own garden patch to do? Grow sprouts.
Sprouts are one of nature’s most nutritious foods, full of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids as well as a great source of roughage. Lentil sprouts are 26% protein; soy bean sprouts, as you can guess, even higher. Radish sprouts contain large amounts of vitamins C and A as well as being a good source of calcium. Sunflower sprouts have lots of vitamin D. Clover sprouts are a good source of cancer-fighting isoflavones and alfalfa sprouts contain phytoestrogens needed for hormonal balance. If you’ve been scared away from sprouts because of contamination incidents with store -bought products, there’s a simple solution. (more…)
Genetically-modified or GMO wheat may still be several years down the pipe. But it has some Washington State farmers worried. Their concerns, expressed earlier this week at Senate hearings on the state’s proposed 
Everyone knows the value of 
The more we learn about worms, the more we marvel at the necessary role they play in our gardens, our environment, and the planet at large. We all know that earthworms digest organic material in soil making it more readily available to crops. We know how they add nitrogen and valuable minerals to the soil, how they make soil more porous and allow for more valuable oxygen and other gases to be available for plants, how they help soil retain moisture, how their digestive tracts serve as incubators for beneficial microbes, 
Terracing — building level steps on sloping ground — is a technique that has been used since ancient times by farmers around the world to grow crops and gardens. Think the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the beautiful 
I’m recalling one of the great sights of spring gardening this cold February night: working the soil for the first time and having birds descend to pick out the slow moving grubs that had been hiding under the earth. Sure, the birds got a valuable earthworm or two, but not so many that it would dent the population. Those worms began to tunnel back almost as soon as daylight hit them. And many were still buried deep — very deep — where my turning fork couldn’t yet reach them. But those grubs, twisting and turning on top of the freshly spaded clods. They made for easy pickings.
Items (and garden news) of interest to organic gardeners, natural lifestyle, and health-conscious individuals that we’ve come across in the last few weeks:
February the first marks the kickoff of a new gardening season. That’s when starting seeds indoors begins, at least for those lucky dogs in zones 8 and 9 and, even for them, only long-held seedlings like celery and onions. (Who even considers mostly frostless zone 10 except for those few of us — not me — that live in sub-tropical Florida?) For the rest of us, the time is fast approaching. You’ll want to be prepared. Time to gather up the things you’ll need to get your seedlings off to a good start.
There are reports of a meeting between the FDA and several major food-supply corporations — Walmart, General Mills, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi-Frito Lay among them — at which the big businesses declared they would give up their fight against the GMO labeling movement. The meeting was first reported by 
We often think of saving seeds in literal terms: letting flowers and vegetables go to seed, whether edible at that point (squash, tomatoes) or not (lettuce); separating and cleaning the seeds, drying them, and then protecting them until we’re able to plant again. But there’s a larger issue here, one that’s apparent when you consider that 94% of the seed varieties available to farmers and gardeners in 1900 have been lost, never to be grown again. Today, many of us are involved in saving seeds from extinction. To quote an old ecological saying: extinction is forever.
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