@bigato
I suggest you (and your friend) look into the organic certification process and standards before deciding about the credibility of growers.
I know several organic growers - they grow excellent tomatoes commercially, I have grown organic tomatoes in my home garden as well.
grow your own
Tomatoes are my main garden plant. Roughly half my backyard has been turned into garden. Last year I planted 36 tomato plants. As HSpencer mentioned, lime really helps if you get bottom rot.I also compost everything and put it back into the garden. This year I covered the tomato patch with about 3-4 inches of compost. This coming weekend I'll plant nursery bought plants and lay out the soaker hoses between them all. In a couple weeks when the plants are established, I'll put down a layer of leaf mulch over top the tomato bed. This will reduce evaporation and take care of weeding (the weeds will be choked out and deprived sunlight).
I've been fairly lucky with insects or the lack of damage from them. One thing I do is to mix flowering plants into my garden. Much has been written in permaculture about balance, I however haven't had to delve to far into it. The jist of it is that if your plants are going to draw pests, you want to balance this by attracting the insects that keep them check. Drawing more pollinators doesn't hurt either. I have a mint patch that I let go to flower that seems to work well. I also plant lots of marigolds. You can save the marigold seeds at the end of the season and you never have to re-buy them. Another odd plant I keep around is an herb called borage. As an herb it was fairly pointless, but it flowers like crazy, the bees love it, and it drops so many seeds it comes back yearly on it's own.
Two Perennials I'd recommend if they fit your needs would be rhubarb and chives. The rhubarb once established will continue on indefinitely, it'll probably outlive me. As for the chives, you can use them to perk up just about any dish. I dice mine up in quarter inch lengths and freeze in ziploc bags to use year-round.
If I had more space, I'd experiment a lot more. Something to to do if make it to ER.
I've been fairly lucky with insects or the lack of damage from them. One thing I do is to mix flowering plants into my garden. Much has been written in permaculture about balance, I however haven't had to delve to far into it. The jist of it is that if your plants are going to draw pests, you want to balance this by attracting the insects that keep them check. Drawing more pollinators doesn't hurt either. I have a mint patch that I let go to flower that seems to work well. I also plant lots of marigolds. You can save the marigold seeds at the end of the season and you never have to re-buy them. Another odd plant I keep around is an herb called borage. As an herb it was fairly pointless, but it flowers like crazy, the bees love it, and it drops so many seeds it comes back yearly on it's own.
Two Perennials I'd recommend if they fit your needs would be rhubarb and chives. The rhubarb once established will continue on indefinitely, it'll probably outlive me. As for the chives, you can use them to perk up just about any dish. I dice mine up in quarter inch lengths and freeze in ziploc bags to use year-round.
If I had more space, I'd experiment a lot more. Something to to do if make it to ER.
so how's your garden going so far this year, SF?
+1 for what bigato said - feed your soil. are you composting? you said you were rotating crops - are you planting beans each year? i'm thinking about trying to sow a winter cover crop (clover or alfalfa) to feed the soil over winter .. haven't tried that yet.
comfrey makes a great natural fertilizer. stinky but effective. and you can grow your own.
+1 for what bigato said - feed your soil. are you composting? you said you were rotating crops - are you planting beans each year? i'm thinking about trying to sow a winter cover crop (clover or alfalfa) to feed the soil over winter .. haven't tried that yet.
comfrey makes a great natural fertilizer. stinky but effective. and you can grow your own.
so how's your garden going so far this year, SF?
Not bad, thanks for asking. The bug and disease problems don't usually hit until August, so we'll see then.
We do compost, and we don't plant beans each year. Actually we grow relatively few beans. Clover grows naturally here, but really nothing at all grows during the winter, during which one typically does not see the ground due to several feet of snow.
