Straight-ahead Organic: A Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Great Vegetables in a Less than Perfect World

Book by Ogden, Shepherd

Shepherd Ogden is founder and president of The Cook's Garden, a mail order seed and supply house in Londonderry, Vermont begun in 1983 as part of his existing market gardening operation. The Cook’s Garden is a leader in the production and sale of certified organic garden seed in the United States and Canada.

Ogden is a former board member of both The Vermont Small Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and the Garden Writers Association of America, and is also a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, PEN New England, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Author's Guild, and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. He is the author of more than fifty magazine articles on all aspects of horticulture, agriculture and the environment. He has been a contributing editor for both Organic Gardening and National Gardening magazines, where until recently he was Editor at Large. His articles on gardening and environmental issues have appeared in those magazines as well as Garden Design, Horticulture, Country Journal, Harrowsmith, Country Living, New England Living, Eating Well and the Boston Globe. He was the 1988 recipient of the American Horticultural Society's GB Gunlogson Award for "extraordinary and dedicated efforts in the field of horticulture" and has received numerous book and magazine writing awards.

Ogden was trained in Environmental Journalism at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he authored research reports on industry public relations efforts to defeat and then derail container deposit legislation, apparent manipulation of data in pre-introduction safety tests of artificial sweeteners, and an incident of sick building syndrome at the University. He also interned at the Environmental Study Conference, in the U.S. Congress, where he was the acid rain specialist and liaison for Earth Day 1980 and is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. He has lectured at botanical gardens and appeared at professional and amateur symposia in most regions of the United States, and in 1995 conducted a month long lecture tour of the Czech Republic dealing with sustainable gardening and agricultural practices under the auspices of Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (USAID).

His recent focus has been on transgenic plant technologies, and he is working on a book about the effects of biotechnology and the market system on our food supply.. Ogden has appeared on numerous panels concerning biotechnology including conferences at Cornell University and the Radcliffe Institute, and he has given lectures at the National Conservation Training Center, Yale University and public meetings in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and California. In February 2000 Ogden was the keynote speaker at the Northeast Organic Farmer’s Association winter meeting in Randolph, Vermont.