Let's get one thing straight: You're really not lazy. You're just busy, and the last thing you want to do is crouch in the hot sun for hours pulling weeds. Honey, I feel your pain. Here are a few tricks to get your garden in order fast, so you can move on with your life.

Those juicy, yummy, unbelievably perfect garden tomatoes are not going to be here much longer, so don't squander your bounty! Make some incredible dishes (and desserts!) with your heirlooms, plums, beefsteaks and those cute cherry tomatoes. Even as you enjoy them today, there are plenty of easy ways to savor the flavor when the season has long faded into Christmas shopping and the dreaded subzeros. Try these eleven ideas to make the most out of your garden of love tomatoes.

Can you really blame inquisitive and hungry neighborhood residents for sizing up your garden and perhaps sampling a few particularly enticing tomatoes or peppers? If given the chance to enjoy a fresh from the vine meal with little or no struggle, you’d probably leap at the chance to crunch and run, too. This presents quite a predicament for the well-intentioned gardener who prefers to work with Mother Nature’s creatures rather than against them. How can the fruits of one’s labor be protected without losing a significant portion to critters that go bump in the night – all without harming an ever-lovin’ hair or feather on their heads?

In the not-so-distant long, long, time ago days, our ancestors took careful measures to save seeds. They carried them to new towns and across oceans. And although they had little else in the way of reassuring guarantees for food back then (Pizza Hut delivery was still a few years away), there are other worthy benefits to saving seeds than just a source of calories. Those seeds saved from your garden are better acclimated to your climate and pests, and you'll see the benefit when they out-perfom seeds bought in packets. And, let's not forget flavor. Just grew the best tomato on earth? No reason to risk bad ones next year. Read on for some tips...

When Mike Lieberman started growing his own food, he didn’t know what he was doing—he just went for it.

Organic Authority spoke with Mike, founder of urbanorganicgardener.com, about the journey of growing his own food, his website, and where he’s at today. Whether you’re currently enjoying your organic garden or are looking forward to next year, check out his advice.

Perhaps you have a garden, and you've already thought about how to get your organic garden started. Or, if you live in an apartment, you might have considered setting up a windowsill garden or a container garden, or you may even be lucky enough to live near some fantastic vertical urban gardens!

However, if you don't have a community garden nearby and don't fancy making one yourself, then take a look at some of these super innovative design ideas for gardens inside your home. Some of them are available to buy now and others are just fantastic concepts, but either way they should definitely be marvelled at!

Now that we’re all spending more time in our yards grazing under the summer sun, let’s talk about how grass fits into this more enlightened, eco-friendly equation. A lush, living emerald carpet surrounding one’s homestead may be inarguably easy on the eyes and cooling on bare feet, but maintaining it requires the utilization of extensive resources – copious amounts of water, toxic fertilizing chemicals and lawnmower fuel – with the unfortunate consequence being noise, environmental and atmospheric pollution.

There’s a very beautiful thing about Mother Nature that happens when we don’t stuff her with too much gunk: Plants grow and animals live in harmony. Yes, it sounds like a children’s book written in the 1970s, but it’s also a notion that many an organic gardener are getting wise to these days.

Companion planting, a practice used by organic and biodynamic gardeners, is the term given when one plants certain types of plants near each other because they are mutually beneficial. In the case of growing food in a garden plot, there are a number of flowers you can plant for natural pest control. Toss out the pesticides (or wait, maybe you should contact the EPA to find out how to properly dispose of that toxic waste) and instead plant some attractive and aromatic flowers. Ah, that’s biodynamic gardening for you.