The spring greens are coming in! This past weekend, I had fiddlehead ferns in Maine. And the weekend before that, I made my first salad from my garden here in Pennsylvania, pinching off a few tiny leaves and herbs from each plant. Oh, the flavor! Fresh basil and parsley! The tenderest greens, and they would […]
Gardening Thoughts
A Year Without a Garden
Here’s something I love about Rodale Inc. Last month, when we had an all-employee meeting where we asked employees to submit questions to me and other Rodale executives—anonymously, of course!—this was one of the questions I received: In one of your final “Maria’s View” articles for Organic Gardening, you wrote you were going to leave your […]
Agricultural Nirvana
photo and text by guest blogger Matthew Benson, photographer, organic farmer, and author of Growing Beautiful Food “Out of such chaos comes the dancing star,” once said my favorite dystopian curmudgeon, Nietzsche, who may have come from farming blood, for all I know. Nietzsche’s obsessions with hardship and trial as paths to enlightenment, just like […]
4 Tips for Starting Your Own Urban Garden
by guest blogger Julie Malone, assistant buyer at Rodale’s and urban garden & food blogger One day, I’ll have my dream garden. It will be lush with edible flowers, a tea garden, perfectly staked tomatoes flanked by hearty-stemmed peppers, endless grids of greens, berry bushes tucked in the peripheries, and an orchard in the background […]
Sometimes You Just Need to Dig a Hole
After a recent visit to my garden, I’ve come to the realization that I’m much more of a landscaper than a vegetable gardener. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up on vegetables, but I understand now that I prefer to plant a bush, tree, or flower and let it grow on its own, for as long […]
This Year’s Peas
OK, peas and I, we go a long way back. We’ve had our good year (somewhere around 2003) and our bad years (too many to name). We’ve fought rabbits and mostly lost. We’ve tried trellising of all sorts, elaborate and almost nonexistent, decorative and ugly. The truth is, peas are worth fighting for. Not snap […]
10 Surprising Ways to Teach Kids to Love Nature
As the weather starts to improve, it’s the perfect time to get kids out and about and show them the joy of nature. It doesn’t have to be a structured thing—in fact, unstructured is almost always better when it comes to kids and nature. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, here’s a list of […]
Learning to Grow Anything, Anywhere: an Interview with an Expert Organic Gardener
by guest blogger Maya Rodale, author of smart and sassy romance novels You might expect that, as a Rodale, I grew up gardening. This is sort of true—I mainly grew up reading in the yard while my mom gardened and I occasionally helped with the weeding. And I enjoyed the fruits of her labors. It […]
Scratch
Raised on America’s first organic farm, Scratch author Maria Rodale learned how to make everyday favorites from, yes, scratch — the way you remember them; the way they turn out best.
Order NowOrganic Manifesto
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment.
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