Maria Rodale's Organic Gardening (Your Seasonal Companion to Creating a Beautiful and Delicious Organic Garden) - Hardcover

Rodale, Maria

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087596799X ISBN 13: 9780875967998

Publisher: Rodale Books, 1998

Synopsis

Maria Rodale, the third generation of the family that originated the organic gardening movement in the United States, has written a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to designing and planting an organic garden that is beautiful, as well as delicious.

No longer is the organic garden filled with messy homemade pest traps, plant ties from old pantyhose and recycled Coke-bottle watering devices. Maria Rodale takes organic gardening to a new level. Using sophisticated design techniques from authorities in every field of gardening, readers will learn the secrets of creating a flowering landscape that's gorgeous and productive, time- and energy-efficient, and filled with hearty fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Conveniently divided by season, addressing specific gardening issues, Maria Rodale's Organic Garden includes delicious recipes, and 600 color photographs. Every gardener, from beginner to advanced, will cherish this invaluable guide.

About this title

About the Author

Maria Rodale is the granddaughter of J.I. Rodale, who brought organic gardening to the United States. She gardens in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where she is also vice-chairperson of Rodale Press.

From the Inside Flap

Get more pleasure from your garden--and your life--with Maria Rodale's Organic Gardening. In this lavishly photographed book, Maria Rodale shows how organic gardening can be beautiful as well as bountiful, lush as well as luscious, sophisticated as well as soul-satisfying. Maria takes a season-by-season approach, showing how you can design your landscape for maximum livability every month of the year.

Each season has its own special tips, tools, and techniques, from starting seeds and making compost through pruning and companion planting. There are delicious harvest fresh recipes for each season, with wonderful ways to get more pleasure from cooking and eating your own organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs. And there are in-depth interviews with gardening experts, revealing their special, hard-won secrets and techniques. There is even a seasonal calendar so you can plan your gardening activities.

So pull up a chair and pick up Maria Rodale's Organic Gardening. You'll discover a bold new world of beautiful and delicious gardening fun!

Reviews

In this debut of a new generation of America's first family of organic gardening, the author shucks the down-home, quirky pragmatism of her forebears to cultivate a more genteel interest in the style and pleasure of gardens. The theme behind this seasonally arranged almanac is that organic gardens can be beautiful and will produce delicious vegetables and fruit. A dizzying kaleidoscope of personal memoirs, philosophy and information is loosely organized into a legion of lists (everything from "easy steps to make your dreams come to life" to good bugs/bad bugs) and ubiquitous info bytes ("11 reasons why you should never, ever use chemicals again" and "five ways to dig up grass") and a few too many common-sense recipes (Mashed Potatoes, Corn). The breadth of subject matter is the strength of this bookAand its weakness. Although gardening neophytes will encounter encouragement and helpful advice, many will find that the fluffy or self-evident tips weaken the book. Rodale says, "This is not a book about how fabulous my own garden is. It's far too new and immature.... Maybe in another 30 years I will do a book on my own beautiful yard." Gardeners with some experience may opt to wait for the author's own maturing as a gardener and a writer. 600 color photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Following in the footsteps of her grandfather, founder of Organic Gardening magazine, and her father, founder of the Rodale Institute, the author shares basic organic methods and tips she has used to create her own sophisticated garden. She also includes ideas for celebrating the beauties of the four seasons, offering recipes and suggesting activities. Similar to Rebecca Kolls's Rebecca's Garden: Four Seasons To Grow On (LJ 5/1/98), her book is likely to be in demand because of its organic emphasis and the Rodale reputation, and it contains enough unique material to make it a worthwhile purchase. Even those readers already familiar with organic gardening will benefit from the comments on the history of the organic movement. Many will also enjoy the brief interviews with Rodale Institute staffers and the insights into the author's famous family. Recommended for all public libraries and gardening collections.?Bonnie Poquette, Appleton P.L., WI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A member of organic gardening's first family here in America, Rodale--J. I.'s granddaughter--presents a potpourri of gardening tips, recipes, remedies, conversations, and reminiscences of particular use to less-experienced gardeners. There is, flat out, a lot of information here about many different aspects of organic gardening: composting, seeds, mulching, pruning, bugs, theories of organic gardening, plants to attract butterflies, preserving the bounty, "the only tools you'll ever need," and so on. With the book divided into four seasons, starting with winter, Rodale tries to re-create a typical year in the garden. But the organization sometimes seems forced. Why are backyard livestock discussed in the autumn section? Less definitive and less organized perhaps than many of the volumes this publisher produces, this book should still appeal to the new gardener. Alan Moores

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Me & My Garden

I grew up on the first organic experimental farm in America. It wasn't the first organic farm, since all farms before the 1900s were organic. However, it was the first one that specifically set out to test and experiment with organic gardening and farming practices, while most of the country became completely enamored of and addicted to chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The farm was started by my grandfather J. I. Rodale who moved from New York City to Pennsylvania in the 1940s for both health and financial reasons. Land was cheap back then--he bought 65 acres and a house for $7,000. He had grown up in and above a grocery store on the Lower East Side; his family lived off the food that was too rotten to sell. Later, he became obsessed with fresh food that was grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. He called it "organic."

J. I. started Organic Gardening magazine in 1942 and Prevention magazine in 1950. He died when he was 70, but he lived 20 years longer than any of his brothers or sisters, who all suffered from heart conditions.

My father, Bob Rodale, continued the tradition, adding the focus of working with farmers, since he felt they could make the biggest difference. He started the Rodale Institute and proved scientifically that not only was organic agriculture more financially efficient than conventional farming but that it also actually improved the soil over time rather than depleting it. He called that "regeneration" Unfortunately, my father was killed in a car crash in Moscow at the age of 60, while starting up an organic farming magazine in Russian.

Growing Up on the Farm

When I was a kid, there was nothing unusual about living on the farm, other than the occasional visitor who would intrude on the imaginary play world of a farm kid. Most of the time, especially in summer, I spent the whole day roaming around the gardens. I played with the chickens, cows, cats, and pigs. I ate fresh berries and vegetables when I was hungry. I climbed trees, built forts in the hay barn, swam, and napped in the sun-warmed grass.

My first job at age 13 was working on the farm. It was that year when I shoveled my first compost pile, drove my first (and unfortunately only) tractor, and pulled my first weed. I will never forget the first day, when I was squatting in the rock garden, having been assigned to pull weeds. Rock gardens are notoriously knuckle-damaging weeding problems, so I was just ripping the weeds off at the stem.

"No, no, no!" said Bob Hofstetter, the farmer with the Pennsylvania Dutch accent. "You have to pull weeds out by the roots!" I can't tell you how many times I have thought back to that moment of wisdom. I have thought about it when I'm lying on the ground exhausted from struggling and finally winning a tug-of-war with an especially stubborn and deep-rooted weed.

I have also thought about it when I've encountered personal or work problems in my life that I know will not go away just by cutting the problem off at the stem. To me, that is the true beauty and allure of working in the garden. It gives you time to learn and time to think and teaches lessons you can constantly apply to the rest of your life.

That summer I also learned how to become an excellent shot with dirt balls.

When I was 16, I was eager to get out of my parents' house (rebel that I was). My parents allowed me to stay out at the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm for the summer as long as I worked out there. Did I ever get the better end of the deal!

The Rodale Institute farm was where large-scale agricultural research was done. It employed scientists year-round and lots of student interns during the summer. I spent that summer weeding fields of test plots with other students while discussing philosophy, religion, and, of course, music.

It was on that farm, in those fields, that I had to confront my conflict about weeding. If all plants are good in their own way, I thought, is it right for me to kill plants that are not the "chosen ones"? Believe me, when you spend eight hours out in the middle of a huge field weeding all day, you start to think of such things. Eventually I got over it.

I did a lot of other interesting things that summer--like harvesting corn samples from hundreds of test plots, labeling and drying the samples, grinding them up in the 120°F drying house, and helping to analyze them. I planted amaranth, freeze-dried amaranth, and ground up amaranth seeds for testing. I smoked my first cigar (which, by the way, is an excellent way to repel gnats!).

Small-Town Living in America

I didn't really get my hands in the dirt again until 1980, when I rented a house on the main street of a small town. I was a young unmarried mother who was going to college and working part-time as a technical artist, so I didn't have too much time left for gardening. But still I dug, I planted, I designed, and I harvested a few meager things.

The house had been built in 1838, so there was a unique blend of old- fashioned trees and shrubs, crumbling cement walkways and terraces, dead overgrown plants, and depleted soil. Over the next few years I created a humble but lush yard that had so much work put into it I couldn't imagine ever leaving. So I bought the house.

When I met my future husband, gardening was one of the main things that brought us together. He was working for Organic Gardening magazine at the time. And although he had never had his own garden, that was only because he had never had the yard for it, for he came from a family of hard-core Italian gardeners. I let him have a corner in my vegetable garden, and the rest is history.

Not that it was easy. It was hard to forgive him when he thought he was doing me a favor by pulling weeds, when in reality he had just pulled out over 20 asparagus plants I had just spent five hours transplanting the week before. It was, however, a good test of our commitment to each other. He hates it when I tell people about that story, so I won't mention it again.

He was the one who suggested that we get our vegetable garden soil tested. I asked him to get it tested for hazardous metals and such, too, since we lived on a main street with lots of traffic.

It was one week before our September wedding when we got the horrible news.

Learning the True Meaning of Regeneration

"You're not eating anything from that soil you sent me a sample of, are you?" asked the soil tester over the phone.

"Yeah, why?" my husband asked.

"Your lead levels are really, really high."

"How high is that?"

"Was your yard ever a paint dump?"

When I heard the news, I thought of all sorts of scary things. Had it hurt my daughter all these years to make mud pies and play in the yard? Had it hurt me? Had we been poisoning ourselves with our fruits and vegetables? So much for gardening organically all these years! What could it be from? What were we going to do? Would we have to move? Were we healthy? Fortunately, my daughter was healthy, happy, smart, and neurologically well.

From that day forward, we didn't touch anything in our yard for over a year. That year was a long, ugly process of getting tests done all over our yard. We had samples of our fruits and vegetables tested. We did research into the options and possible solutions. We struggled with long-term decisions, such as what our commitment was to fixing it, our desire to keep living where we were living, and how much we were willing and able to spend to fix it.

We looked into the history of the house and why it had such high lead levels. I struggled with the thought of all those years of gardening, designing, eating--all the money spent on perennials, trees, shrubs, and other plants. What could be saved? The experience made for an interesting first year of marriage. But we came out of the other side the stronger for it.

What had caused the high lead levels? Although there was lead in the stucco that covered our house, that wasn't enough to cause it. Turns out that not only had the house next to us been a gas station up until the '50s (with leaking tanks of leaded gasoline) but it had also been a car repainting business. So we were, literally, growing our food in a paint dump. Just one reason why it's important to find out about the history of the land you live on. The industrial and agricultural revolutions were not kind to American soils.

What were our options? A lead level of 100 ppm or over is considered dangerous. A lead level of 500 ppm or over is considered hazardous waste. The only test result under 100 was an area in the front of the house next door that had had new soil brought in (after they took out the old gas tanks)! There were a few spots, with no rhyme or reason to them, that were well over 1,000 ppm.

The plant testing had shown us that the root and leaf crops were high in lead. So things like carrots, garlic, and lettuces were bad. But fruits (like the apple tree and our tomatoes) somehow filtered out the lead. So it wasn't going to be an unreasonable proposition to grow things again if we could bring in clean soil.

We had decided that not only did we want to stay in the house but also that we wanted to make it even better than before. My father's philosophy of regeneration really got me past the crisis mentality. His philosophy of regeneration was that there is an inherent healing process in the earth and in us, and after a crisis or disturbance, we have the opportunity to heal and grow into something stronger than before.

Some of the soil we needed to have placed in a special waste site. The less heavily contaminated soil was taken by the excavator to spread out on his woodland so that it would have the opportunity to be diluted even more over the years by fallen leaves. The soil we brought in was a local organic mixture of compost, mushroom soil, and sand.

The industrial and agricultural revolutions were not kind to American soils.

But all this didn't happen until two years after we had found out about the problem. What did we do the second year? Redesign our yard. At first I was devastated by the thought of starting all over. But then I started becoming excited. How many times had I wished before that I could have access to a backhoe to mold the earth exactly as I wanted it? How many times had I thought, "If only I had more garden beds all over the yard . . . "?

A Detour to France

Around the time we were thinking about redesigning our yard, I saw an ad for La Napoule Garden Design Course in the south of France. The teacher was John Brookes, whom I had never heard of. All the designing I had ever done had been done by my own wits and art background and not by any book on garden design.

By this time in my life I had become a highly stressed executive desperately in need of a vacation. This course fit the bill, since it had always been a dream of mine to go to the south of France. So off I went.

What a joy! There were only nine of us, and we each had our own drafting table in a well-lit old artist's studio in an old stone castle right on the Mediterranean. The days were spent working on our designs and visiting the amazing and fabulous private gardens of the region. (All the rich old ladies wanted to show off their gardens to the famous John Brookes.) And, of course, we ate delicious French food and saw slides and heard lectures by John. My garden design turned out much better than I could have imagined, with his looking over my shoulder at times and making extremely wise and appropriate comments. It was fabulous.

I happily came back from France with my beautiful plan. My husband and daughter hated it. Well, not exactly. But while I had gone through a step- by-step process of design and planning, to them it just looked too different.

Let's just say the process did not end there. In fact, it went on for another good eight or nine months. Hence, my hard-earned tips on garden design negotiations with family members in the "Spring" section of this book.

The end result was, and still is, just a beginning, of course. Recently I took a two-week Permaculture course with the founder of the concept, Bill Mollison (a rare and humorous treat). Learning about Permaculture has added a whole new set of ideas for me to think about--important ideas about fertility, productivity, efficiency, and learning about nature--rather than only thinking about beautiful design. Learning about nature and gardening is a lifelong education that can never be complete. Far from discouraging me, each new discovery just seems to reinforce the magic and mystery of life.

It has been two years since the last backhoe left the property, and there are still years of work to do. But gardening is about patience as much as anything.

A Gardening Book Is Born

I am not an official Master Gardener. I would never be able to answer all the questions about chemical fertilizers on the test. And I am weak at remembering the Latin names for things. But I have been gardening for over 20 years--entirely organically. And as you have just read, I have had a few experiences that have forced me to stretch my range.

This is not a book about how fabulous my own garden is. It's far too new and immature--which is why you won't see a lot of vistas of my garden. Maybe in another 30 years I will do a book on my own beautiful yard.

Instead, this is a book I have wanted and had to write to find. Being born into a lineage of organic gardeners and farmers does not make a person automatically experienced and educated on what's good and what's bad, what works and what doesn't. I meet people all the time who are interested in gardening, and even gardening organically, but who don't know where to start or what to do.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087596799X
• ISBN 13: 9780875967998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352