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Imagine, right outside your door, a lovely little perennial herb garden for you, your family, and your neighbors to enjoy.  Low-maintenance Once established, many herbs grow and spread easily and don't require much in the way of water and fertility.  They also tend to grow densely and out-compete weeds more easily than annual plantings. Tea For many medicinal herbs, the only way to easily access them is by growing them yourself.  Unavailable at the grocery store, and completely unavailable fresh, you simply can't replace herbs grown right outside your door.  Many medicinal teas are best made from fresh leaves. Pollinators...

If you are like me and farm in an area where ear wigs are a big problem, hand pollinating just does not work. Ear wigs feed on tender corn silks and heavy infestations can reduce pollination of corn. Though the corn silks continue to grow and remain receptive to pollen for around a week, heavy, constant feeding damages them enough that pollination is not achieved. Ear wigs are nocturnal and if you have an infestation you can go out with a headlamp to find you precious developing ears to be covered in ear wigs. During the day they hide in...

Had trouble getting your tomatoes to ripen?  Do loads of plump green fruit hang on your tomato vines at the end of the season?  We've had this problem the last couple of summers too. The common misconception is that tomatoes love hot weather, and the hotter the better.  According to Purdue University though, when daytime temperatures stay consistently over 85 degrees, most tomato varieties have a hard time producing lycopene and carotene, the pigments responsible for the oranges and reds of fully ripe tomatoes.  Though there can be other causes of perpetually-green tomato crops, such as nutrient imbalances, here are some ideas for coping...

As an organic farmer, our arsenal against pests and diseases is limited. We choose not to use chemically synthesized pesticides to defend our crops against the pests and diseases which would damage or destroy our crops. Instead, we have to work with natural solutions to raise healthy and marketable produce. For us, this involves a combination of encouraging natural predators of pest insects, using pest exclusion techniques like row cover, and using naturally resistant crop varieties. The use of naturally resistant crop varieties saves us a lot of work and planning, and is one of the most elegant solutions to...