By Kathy Bond-Borie, Guest Columnist

Storm water runoff can be a big problem during heavy thunderstorms. As the water rushes across roofs and driveways, it picks up oil and other pollutants.

Municipal storm-water treatment plants often can’t handle the deluge, and untreated water ends up in natural waterways in many areas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates as much as 70% of the pollution in our streams, rivers and lakes is carried there by storm water.

To reduce excess water runoff, many towns are encouraging businesses and homeowners to install rain gardens in their yards: specially constructed gardens located in low areas of a yard where storm water can collect. The idea is to have the water funnel naturally to this garden, which collects runoff and stores and filters it until it can be slowly absorbed by soil.

By Kathy Bond-Borie, Guest Columnist 

Green beans are one of the quintessential organic veggies of summer, and they’re hard to beat for the quantity of food they provide per square foot. They’re also easy to grow, provided you can keep bugs and diseases from getting the upper hand. 

Here are six routines to help keep your crop healthy and productive.

1. Soil Preparation

Beans grow well in a wide range of soils without fertilizer. Where fertility is low, mix a complete organic fertilizer into the top 3 or 4 inches of soil before planting. Set up trellises or pole tepees before planting climbing beans.

2. Planting

Plants grow best when spaced about 2 to 4 inches apart. You can plant seeds at this spacing or, better yet, err on the side of planting too many seeds; then, thin them to the recommended spacing just in case some don’t germinate. Plant seeds 1 to 1½ inches deep.

3. Care

Mulch snap beans to help keep the soil cool and retain moisture. Water plants during the summer if rainfall is less than 1 inch per week.

4. Weeding

Beans generally grow quickly and shade out weeds, particularly if they’re grown in wide rows. 

But if you need to cultivate around plants to dislodge weeds, do so near the soil surface so you don’t injure plant roots. The best time is after a rain, when the plants are completely dry and the soil has dried out a little. This is when many weeds start to germinate.

5. Insects and Disease

Rotate the location of your bean crops from year to year to discourage diseases, and avoid working around plants when the foliage is wet. 

To deter Mexican bean beetles, use floating row covers over seedlings to prevent egg laying. Check leaf undersides for masses of yellowish eggs, and squish any you spot. Handpick adult beetles and larvae. Neem oil will deter feeding adults; horticultural oil and organic insecticidal soap are useful against the larvae. 

Clean up plant debris in the garden at the end of the season to reduce the number of overwintering adults. Where these beetles are a severe problem, look for naturally resistant bean varieties.

6. Pick ’em Young

For the best flavor and nutritional value, pick snap beans when they’re young, tender and about the diameter of a pencil. Hold the stem with one hand and the pod with your other hand to avoid pulling off branches that will produce more pods. 

Picking encourages more blossoms and pods. After your first picking, you can probably pick again 3 to 5 days later. 

To keep the harvest going as long as possible, don’t let any seeds develop inside the pods. Pole (climbing) beans are slower to mature, but they have a longer harvest period.

A former floral designer and interior plantscaper, Kathy Bond-Borie has spent 20 years as a garden writer/editor, including her current role as horticultural editor for the National Gardening Association. She loves designing with plants and spends more time playing in the garden—planting and trying new combinations—than sitting and appreciating it.

Photo courtesy of the National Gardening Association

Most cats have a visceral reaction to catnip (Nepeta cataria), whose aromatic oils entice them to eat it, rub up against it, roll around on the floor and/or drool. (This is your cat on drugs…)

Outdoor/Windowsill Gardening 

Growing your own organic catnip is a breeze. Tolerant of virtually any type of soil, the perennial thrives outdoors and in windowsill gardens. You can buy a packet of 450 certified organic catnip seeds for as little as $1.89.

Organic Cat Toys 

As for organic cat toys, Duckyworld Products sells a variety of stuffed playthings, including 100% organic catnip pillow toys ($7.69) and the adorable Stinky Sardine ($8.75). The company’s toys are filled solely with 100% organic catnip—no cotton fillers, plastic pieces or other cheap mainstream stuffings.

DIY crafters should check out Holly Tse’s Make Your Own Cat Toys: Saving the Planet One Cat Toy at a Time ($11.95), which features more than 50 projects and lots of eco-friendly cat care tips.

Brew a Cup of Organic Catnip Tea 

Humans are not immune to catnip’s botanical powers. Steep dried plant leaves in hot water, and you’ll enjoy a lemony mint tea.

Celebration Herbals sells a box of 24 ready-to-use organic catnip teabags for $4.89. The bags are chlorine-free and can be composted after use, and the box is made from recycled paper.

DIY Beauty Products 

Organic catnip essential oil is a natural mosquito repellant, and you can use it to scent handmade bath and body products (soaps, lotions, bath salts). It can, however, be expensive: about $23 per fluid ounce. That said, a little goes a long way, so consider it an investment.

Ever feel guilty about throwing away vegetable and fruit peels, rinds or scraps? 

Your intuition may tell you there’s a better way to handle these leftovers. 

Composting is a great way to make use of organic matter that you would otherwise trash. 

Building a compost heap is relatively easy, and it will continually give back to your garden and the environment. 

According to California’s CalRecycle program, the four necessary composting ingredients are: 

1. Nitrogen (from sources like grass clippings or those throwaway veggie scraps)
2. Carbon (from sources like sawdust or twigs)
3. Water
4. Air 

Once your compost is at the ideal level of decomposition (uniformly dark brown and crumbly), spread it on your garden to give plants a nutrient boost. 

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Let It Rot! The Gardener’s Guide to Composting

Photo courtesy of ARA

Children love summer vacation, but parents often find it difficult to keep them engaged in productive activities. 

Most kids experience a learning slump during their time away from school. At best, they show little or no academic growth over the summer, according to the National Summer Learning Association. At worst, they lose 1 to 3 months of learning. 

It is, however, possible to keep your children engaged and stimulated over the summer months. Books like I’m a Scientist: Backyard—part of a new series for younger readers (5+ years)—introduce kids to the world of science with interesting outdoor experiments. Clear, step-by-step instructions allow children to absorb science easily. 

You can also use summer vacation to instill a love of nature, the outdoors and organic gardening. I’m a Scientist: Backyard teaches preschoolers and early elementary students to: 

• Take a garden safari
• Make a bug house out of a soil sample to observe the creepy-crawlies that live within
• Perform plant-based experiments that foster an interest in botany
• Experience wind power by making their own pinwheels
• Discover a tree’s age and measure its height using just a stick and a piece of string
• Make a sundial to tell time using only the sun’s position
• Learn about centrifugal force with a simple bucket of water 

The book retails for $12.99 and will be released July 19. You may preorder it on Amazon and save 20% ($10.39). 

Photo courtesy of DK Publishing

Want to give your lawn an advantage over heat, drought, weeds and bugs?

Set your mower to one of the highest cut settings, advise the experts from Scotts, a company known for numerous organic gardening products.

Roots will remain deep, and water will reach soil more effectively.

Longer blades of grass also:

• Crowd out weeds
• Capture more rainwater
• Reduce moisture loss from soil
• Make your lawn look greener

And while we’re on the subject, be sure to keep clippings so you can mow and feed your lawn at the same time. Clippings break down quickly, recycling nutrients back into the soil.

If clippings land on your driveway or sidewalk, return them to your lawn so they can feed it naturally.

Image Credit: Camera Lass

Don't you think the world would be a better place if everyone did a little gardening? An unexpected group is coming around to that idea—prison administrators.

The Natural Resources Defense Council's Smarter Cities Project reports that prisons across the country are harnessing the therapeutic powers of gardening. In Philadelphia, lucky and cooperative inmates get to tend the prison's organic garden, which produces thousands of pounds of food that ends up in local food pantries and soup kitchens.

"Our whole garden is managed organically," says Sharat Somashekara, city gardens coordinator for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. "We build the soil, we compost, we cover crop—we even make our own cayenne pepper spray." Somashekara says he sees improvement in 90% of the people he works with—gardening makes them healthier in body and spirit.

This prison gardening plan sounds great to me. The inmates receive horticultural therapy and learn valuable skills, charitable organizations get organic food, and the world becomes just a little bit greener. Van Jones and Thomas Friedman have written about how investing in a green economy is good public policy. For more information on how green living can make the world a better place, check out this article on how grasscycling can save your lawn (and the world), or these 8 tips for green landscaping.

Image Credit: PHS/Margaret Funderburg

By Kathy Bond-Borie, Guest Columnist  

Store-bought tomatoes are nearly devoid of flavor, so growing your own is the best way to truly savor the taste of this fruit, which captures the essence of summer. 

But with thousands of organic varieties available—from cherished heirlooms to the hottest new hybrids—how do you narrow your choices?

Ripening Time

 If you’re buying seeds to start your own plants, read catalog descriptions carefully to find out “days to maturity.” This indicates approximately how soon you can expect ripe fruit once you’ve transplanted seedlings to the garden. 

Plants sold at garden centers are often labeled “early,” “midseason” or “late” to indicate when the variety should start ripening.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate

Determinate plants stop growing once flower buds emerge. Because of their more restrained size, many determinate varieties require no staking or caging, but providing support can improve fruit quality. All fruit ripens within a relatively short period—usually about a week to 10 days. This can be a boon if you’re canning. 

If you prefer to have fewer tomatoes over a longer period of time, indeterminate varieties are a better choice. Vines continue to grow and set fruit throughout the season and won’t quit until the weather turns too hot or cold to sustain fruiting and growth.

How Will You Use the Fruit?

When selecting a tomato variety, keep in mind how you plan to use the fruit. 

There are tomato varieties suited for just about every purpose: eating fresh, making tomato paste, canning, drying and even grooming for county fair competitions.

Seeds or Transplants?

The easiest way to start your tomato patch is by purchasing young plants, also called transplants or starts. They’re available at garden centers or online catalogs.

That said, starting your own seed gives you an almost endless list of varieties to choose from, allowing you to select tomatoes that best suit your growing conditions and tastes. Starting seeds also provide a chance to exercise your green thumb earlier in the season, and nurturing plants from seed to harvest is a rewarding experience.

 Plant seeds 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date for your region, and place them under fluorescent lights. Contact a nearby Extension Service office or your local weather service to find out your last spring frost date.

Disease Resistance 

By planting tomato varieties with built-in resistance to diseases, you can have a bit more control over your garden’s success. 

For instance, many tomato varieties are resistant to soil-borne diseases like Verticillium and Fusarium wilts and nematodes. Most seed catalogs indicate resistance to these diseases by putting F (Fusarium), V (Verticillium) and N (nematodes) after the variety name. You’ll also find varieties with resistance to viruses like tomato mosaic virus (T), and Alternaria (A), the fungus that causes early blight. 

Talk to a nearby Extension Service office or to other home gardeners to find out if specific tomato diseases are common in your area.

A former floral designer and interior plantscaper, Kathy Bond-Borie has spent 20 years as a garden writer/editor, including her current role as horticultural editor for the National Gardening Association. She loves designing with plants and spends more time playing in the garden—planting and trying new combinations—than sitting and appreciating it.

Photo courtesy of the National Gardening Association

Grass is like any other living entity: It requires nutrients and regular meals to grow. 

The following guide from Scotts, a company known for numerous organic gardening products, will help you maintain a healthy lawn.

Fall 

Think of fall as breakfast for your grass: the most important meal of the day. 

Many experts say fall marks the single most important lawn feeding of the year, with one exception: Southern grasses, which benefit from fertilization during the June–July rainy season. 

Feeding right before the winter months gives grass the nutrients it needs to recover from summer damage and increases nitrogen storage for early spring.

Early Spring

Spring feeding is the lunch that strengthens roots, getting them off to a good start before the heavy growing season. 

If you’ve had crabgrass in the past, now’s the time to apply an organic combo: fertilizer and a pre-emergent weed killer.

Late Spring

By late spring, grass is busy growing and using up stored energy. 

If you’re bothered by dandelions and other emerging weeds, use an organic weed and feed combination product that provides your lawn with nutrients and helps control broadleaf weeds. 

If your lawn has only a few weeds, use an organic liquid spot-weed treatment. And if weeds don’t bother you, a dinner of lawn food will continue to maintain grass health.

Summer

 Heat, drought, foot traffic and insects can stress out your grass. Your lawn may appreciate a snack to help protect and strengthen it. 

If weeds or bugs don’t pose problems, you can substitute an application of straight lawn fertilizer for any of the meals on our menu. 

Photo courtesy of Scotts

By Kathie Bond-Borie, Guest Columnist

Though each flower lasts but a day, daylilies light up the garden with blooms for many weeks. The common orange and yellow stalwarts have given way to color combinations too numerous to list, and browsing a catalog is enough to make an organic gardener swoon.

With flowers that are single or double, ruffled or smooth, large or diminutive, there are daylilies for every taste. Best of all, they ask very little of us—just a partially sunny spot and average soil.

Daylilies are categorized in several different ways:

1. Deciduous kinds go dormant in frosty weather.
2. Evergreens can tolerate frost and grow all winter in mild regions.
3. There’s an intermediate group called semi-evergreen.

The rule of thumb is to avoid deciduous daylilies south of Zone 8 and evergreens north of Zone 7.

Daylilies’ height, as provided in nursery descriptions, refers to the flower stalk, not the foliage. Flower stalks on the shorter varieties grow as high as 12 inches, while the tallest stalks reach more than 6 feet high.

Single daylilies have six petals. Double varieties have a second set of petals, often ruffled. Flower size ranges from 1½ inches (miniature varieties) to 8 or 9 inches across. Some modern daylilies, called “tetraploids,” have twice as many chromosomes as the normal varieties, which gives them larger leaves and flowers.

Daylilies’ color range has expanded to include everything but blue and pure white, and many blossoms are bi- or tricolored.

Growing Tips

Vigorous daylilies make weed- and erosion-proof ground covers. Plant them on banks and roadsides or along waterways. Use dwarf daylilies in rock gardens, containers or as edging for flowerbeds.

When planting several daylily varieties, arrange drifts of a single variety. A random mix almost always looks spotty from spring through fall. Group at least three clumps of one variety together to get a more natural look and a stronger impact at show time.

Daylilies grow best in full sun, ideally 6 hours or more daily. But in hot and dry climates, they benefit from some afternoon shade, as well as irrigation during bloom. Many of the deep reds and paler shades better hold their colors in partial shade. In any zone, daylilies will perform reasonably well with half a day’s shade; they just won’t bloom as vigorously.

Daylilies grow well in a wide range of soils. You can plant them successfully almost any time the ground can be worked. The ideal time to transplant and divide is in spring, as the shoots begin to emerge, or immediately after bloom.

In Zones 9 and 10, plant in early spring (February or March) or fall; avoid planting in mid-summer. Likewise, in the Southeast, don’t plant during midsummer because the high temperatures and humidity may cause new plants to rot.

When planting in fall in cold regions, move the plants at least a month before hard frosts to allow new roots to take hold against frost heaving.

Space plants 18 to 24 inches apart. Plant at the same depth plants grew previously or slightly higher to allow for settling. Firm soil, and then water.

Some cultivars can grow for 20 years without requiring division, but others may need division every second or third season. You’ll know it’s time when you notice flower production declining.

A former floral designer and interior plantscaper, Kathie Bond-Borie has spent 20 years as a garden writer/editor, including her current role as horticultural editor for the National Gardening Association. She loves designing with plants and spends more time playing in the garden—planting and trying new combinations—than sitting and appreciating it.

Photo courtesy of the National Gardening Association