I want to have my very own organic vegetable and herb garden for my family and my consumption. Please share with me how to do so. Thank you in advance.

To get a good organic garden going takes years of soil building. start small as a big garden will get overwhelming come the hot part of summer. I would say a garden no bigger than 10 feet by 20 feet the first growing season.

Now is the time to start garden prep by choosing where you want the garden and opening up the sod. smothering the area where you will have the garden is a good first step or you can plow the sod open and till it in next spring. plowing is a lot more effective than tilling for killing grass.

You will also need some tools. Get a couple of hoes, my favourite is the shuffle or stirrup hoe. You can find these at any box store. they are lighter and easier to use than the standard concrete hoe most people think of when they think about hoes. You will also need a wheel barrow or garden cart, a potato fork (looks somewhat like a pitch fork but fatter), a shovel, a spade, a couple of trowels.

You will need seeds. My favourite place to get seeds is Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine. http://johnnysseeds.com
Start with easy things to grow and pay attention to the fact not everything grows in every season. Lettuce for example is best planted in the spring, it likes cool damp conditions. Tomatoes and peppers like it hot. A good seed catalogue will tell you such information. You will likely want to use seedlings for a lot of things such as tomatoes. Do not buy these at places like Wal-Mart. Go to a local nursery and tell them you are just starting out and you will get a lot of advice. One caveat, most nurseries (and box stores) are NOT organic and do not know much about organic growing so ignore all advice to use chemicals. But you will find healthier seedlings at most local places than box stores.

Good luck

My tomato plants seem to being growing better with the leaves than fruits

You want to get some fertilizer that is higher in phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). A good organic source of phosphorus is bone meal and wood ashes or granite dust are good sources of potassium. You can look for an organic fertilizer at your garden center that has low N and higher P & K values.

Adding compost to the soil when planting your tomatoes will help. You can also make some compost tea and water the plants with it or spray the leaves for foliar feeding.

Visit our website for more gardening ideas at-
http://www.gardening-at-the-crossroads.com/

Good Luck and Happy Gardening from Cathy and Neal!

Arsenic is abound in rice, because it contaminates it from in the soil. My question is if it's still in certified organic rice, since it's a soil contaminant, or if rice grown organic is tested to ensure low or zero levels of arsenic. So?

Your exposure to arsenic in rice is extremely limited, and should not be a concern to ordinary people. If you are in the USA or Canada, you have no need to worry about arsenic in rice. If you are in China or India or in Southeast Asia, that is a different matter.

Regards,
Dan

Some people say hostas and fertilizers do not mix as they are such as hardy plant that they don’t need to be traumatized by fertilizer. Furthermore if you optimize your soil in the first place you won’t need fertilizer.

Most professional hosta gardeners recommend a 10-10-10 blend of fertilizer for hostas as a kind of universal food for the plants. However what you really need to create the perfect soil conditions for hostas is a soil test. This will provide you with an accurate picture of what nutrients your soil is missing. Your county’s office can usually do this for you or you can hire a private testing lab. The fee for this is pretty affordable and you will know exactly what fertilizer to use to augment your soil with fertilizers to grow hostas.

When it comes to hostas and fertilizer your first application should be early in the spring. This is the point when the hostas emerge from their dormant winter phase. Most professional and hobby growers of hostas say this is the time at which the plant needs more nitrogen so a 20-10-10 hosta fertilizer or even a 20-20-20 hosta fertilizer will encourage the plant to expand its root system.

The next application of fertilizer to your hostas should be in early summer after the foliage has opened. The difference between this application and the one you did in early spring is that the hosta fertilizer will be lower in nitrogen. In this case you can use the 10-10-10 or a 10-20-20 solutions to feed your hostas.

You can also skip using any of the commercial fertilizers and go organic. There are many types of organic fertilizers for hostas including ones made of manures, compost, seaweed, fish emulsion, blood meal, cottonseed and bone meal. Keep in mind that if you use an organic hosta fertilizer that it will be very high in nitrogen and therefore best to use early in the spring. As this type of organic hosta fertilizer breaks down it becomes less rich in nitrogen. Also as it breaks down it adds humic acids to the soil, which help support the growth of healthy microbes in the soil. This is why organic fertilizer is beneficial as a natural time-release substance that will enrich your hostas over an entire growing season.

When it comes to hostas and fertilizers you can’t go wrong applying manure or composted manure. Simply lightly pack a couple of inches of manure or composted manure to the surface of the soil at the beginning of each growing season. For optimum results make sure that the plant has an inch or so space away from the manure layered. This will help enhance the health of your hostas and keep them looking gorgeous all season long.

Some of the commercial hosta growers use a slow release fertilizer such as osmocote. This product can be found at your local garden center or at stores such as Menards or Home Depot. The advantage of this type of fertilizer is there is less of a chance of plant burn since fertilizer is released over time. I incorporate slow release fertilizer into the soil before transplanting hostas. I have found an application in June will produce some nice new growth which will be visible in August.

I would love to grow Organic Babay artichokes in a greenhouse. Can't find the BABY seeds anywhere, which makes me wonder if there is such a thing.

I'm thinking that baby artichokes are just artichokes harvested early. You wouldn't be buying organic seeds but you would be growing them organically … no insecticides or other artificial stuff. Seeds would be organic unless packaged with fungicides or genetically engineered.