What’s in the ground:
Weeds, weeds and more weeds. A weeks worth of rain followed by 90 F weather will do that. The other day one of my farming apprentices asked me if weeding served a function or was just for aesthetics. This was a natural question from someone who was getting frustrated pulling weeds everyday. [...]

What’s in the ground:
So if you live in the heat of the city, your root vegetables may be ready to come out of the ground already. Just remember as you take them out to put something else in its place (preferably not a root vegetable so you can keep nutrients in your soil). And remember, [...]

What’s in the ground:
I never thought that I’d become that guy that talks about the weather all the time, at least not until I was old and gray, but I can’t help but pondering in most small talk I make with people, “What happened to Spring?” Now I’m sure there are a whole host of [...]

What’s in the ground:
The other day when the sun was shining and the thermometer read an astonishing 84 F, I considered taking the row cover off of my plants to give them a nice chance to bathe in the direct sun. And if I had a smaller backyard garden I would have considered it. But [...]

What’s in the ground:
Even though it’s been bitterly cold in Philly for the past few days, I am happy that the weather did make an honest man out of me. I would have felt really bad if I told people not to plant and then we had 70 degree weather all week. But the cold [...]

What’s in the ground:
So as you all may have noticed from that first line, we are back to our original format. No trips to India, no long dissertations on the ponderings that winter can invoke. We’re going right back to digging our hands into the soil, getting a little dirty and growing a lot of [...]

I’m writing to you all from the relative warmth of my room in West Philly. We returned from India this past weekend and am very happy to be back in the homestead. It’s a little shocking to the system to leave the warmth of India for the chilly air of Philly. But I can feel [...]

So I’ll not waste anytime with setting the scene, here are the amazing things I learned at Navdanya.
- Seed keeping is one of the most important parts of the growing cycle. I’ll admit that working in such small urban gardens and having the luxury of great seed producing programs in the city and the convienence [...]

So this installment will be more of an introductory one. I just arrived at the Navdanya Organic Farm Institute in Uttarakhand India. The institute was founded by former Nuclear Physicist and now seed saver and eco-feminist, Vandana Shiva. The goal of the institute is to save varieties of seeds that are aggressively being patented by [...]

Hello friends. Writing a little bit early to you as I’m about to head out to a camp in the desert. But I just had to get in a note before I took off. I’m in the north now, where it’s a bit colder and the desert isn’t so fertile. It’s nothing like the fruit [...]