2015 resolution: become a more thoughtful organic gardener, with jeff gillman

PROPOSED 2015 RESOLUTION: Become a more thoughtful organic gardener. Simply avoiding synthetic garden chemicals by swapping them out for a product labeled “organic” isn’t enough—and in some cases, the substitute isn’t even safer, says Jeff Gillman, author of “The Truth about Organic Gardening” and “Decoding Gardening Advice” and more. Consider taking your organic thinking to the next step in 2015 (and maybe win his books to help in the process).

A candid head’s up: Like Jeff, I am less-than-enthusiastic about the seemingly widespread desire among gardeners to shop their way out of issues with pests, disease, or soil imbalances. I buy a lot of seeds and bulbs and plants–but not a lot of “stuff.”

Jeff and I had a funny email exchange, when I invited him to join me on the radio show and podcast, and asked about what topics he’d most like to cover together.

“The topics that I speak on most frequently are garden remedies and thoughtful organic gardening,” Jeff replied. When I read that, my slightly dark humor zoomed in on the phrase “thoughtful organic gardening.”

Except I thought he said, “thoughtless organic gardening.” I guess I was thinking of all the garden-center shelves of products labeled “natural” and “organic” that promise to fix everything–but at a cost that may exceed the sticker price.

Besides his multiple books, Jeff Gillman is a former Associate Professor of Horticultural Science at the University of Minnesota and was a Cooperative Extension specialist for 15 years. He now teaches at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. You may know him as one of the team on the popular Facebook page The Garden Professors, and a blog by the same name.

Listen in now to our recent public-radio conversation

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