The Gardens of Mogreena

They’re not quite the hanging gardens of Babylon, but they are still pretty amazing. Where there was once rubble, a garden now stands. A garden created out of love. A garden created with sweat, blood, biodiesel, compost, and a whole lot of shoveling. The biodiesel powered the tractors that laid the compost out in raised bed rows. We sweat and bled while shoveling pathways and created dimension in this ¼ acre space. The garden just gets better with every passing year.

This is year three in the Modena garden, or Mogreena garden, as we like to say. The gardens at 8 Union Street have evolved into multiple purpose spaces, with the majority of garden space going to veggies. We have gardens for food, gardens for entertaining, and gardens that serve as a pretty face. We have a soft spot for art in the garden, and reusing found objects of industry, but I’ll delve into those topics in a future post.

We added Biochar to a few of the beds this year, to experiment with water and nutrient retention. Our yields should be higher in the Biochar beds and we can’t wait till the harvest comes in! We’ve added more compost and fertilizer, organic of course, and the plants love it. We water the garden with reclaimed water and supplement with well water when needed. We were a little worried when it was dry for about 3 weeks in early spring, but finally the atmosphere is cooperating! Watching the garden grow after a good rain is a miracle of nature.

Garden day has evolved into more than just a day of planting, weeding, and watering. It has evolved into a social gathering of co-workers and friends. The garden is a place and time for relaxation, camaraderie, learning, and exploration. It is amazing what growing your own food can do to influence a willingness to try new vegetables.

Gardens are a joy best shared with others. This is the first of many blog posts where our Mogreena Garden will be shared with the world. I hope you enjoy them.

Starting early spring seeds for the veggie garden

Starting early spring seeds for the veggie garden

I’m planting early spring veggies like carrots, beets, spinach, swiss chard, arugula, lettuce, mustard greens, kale, cabbage, and broccoli. The carrots and beets were sown directly in the garden. Root crops do better when sown direct. Once planted I layed out a product called reemay, or row cover, a thin layer of breathable fabric that allows light and air to pass through, but acts as a blanket at night for young seedlings. You can also use recycled plastic gallon jugs with the base cut off as mini greenhouses.

I started all the rest (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, parsley, cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash) in seed starting flats I picked up at my local garden center. Starting them a few weeks early gives them a head start in the garden and shortens the time to harvest. Knowing when to start seeds requires looking up your last average frost free date for your region. For Southeast Pennsylvania, May 15th is generally regarded as our last frost free date. For best results, look for seed starting flats that come with humidity domes to hold in moisture for best results with seed germination.

I plant my seeds in Organic Mechanics Seed Starting Blend. It has the perfect blend of coconut fiber, worm castings, rice hulls, pine bark, and organic fertilizer to help them start off strong. Most seed starting mixes do not have fertilizer added, another reason Organic Mechanics is my product of choice when starting seeds. Our Seed Starting Blend holds moisture longer than most mixes, but still has plenty of room for drainage so young roots are not sitting in water. I love having to water less! I’m sure you’d agree; both water and time are precious resources.

Speaking of time being a precious resource, I’ve learned that all too well the past 8 months or so…hence the absence from my blog. Organic Mechanics moved, again, hopefully for the last time for quite awhile. We are set up in our new warehouse, all indoors. The machines have been humming away, the guys are back into the routine, and the phones are ringing. Spring is back, and I'm excited for this garden season.

Organic Mechanics Planting Mix!

Allow me to introduce the third member of the Organic Mechanics family, our Planting Mix! Organic Mechanics Planting Mix (PM) is made for amending soil whenever planting a tree, shrub, bulb, perennial, annual...basically anything planted in the ground! We also recommend mixing Planting Mix with topsoil for building raised beds using a 50% / 50% blend of Planting Mix and topsoil for best results. Use your existing topsoil, or go get some at your local, independent garden center.

Our Planting Mix contains compost, aged pine bark, worm castings, and coconut husk fiber. Its the perfect blend of organic matter to help hold moisture in the root zone, giving plants a leg up during dry spells and helping reduce watering requirements. For every 1% increase in organic matter in soils, over one acre, the soil can hold an additional 16,000 gallons of water! Most garden soils have between 1% and 5% organic matter...less if your home is new construction...more if the soil was previously landscaped.

The other big benefit to using Organic Mechanics Planting Mix is the beneficial biology inside every bag. The microbes in compost and worm castings help to make a healthier plant by occuping the real estate around the root zone. Once present, beneficial microbes help to exclude or fight off potential diseases, and help break down organic matter into plant available nutrients.

Always wondering how to plant that tree or shrub correctly? No worries, there is a step by step guide on the back of each bag of Planting Mix. Most important thing is to plant at the same soil level as the existing soil line present in the container you brought home from the local garden center. Hopefully the "root flare" is showing on any trees you buy, and if not you can gently scrape away soil until exposing the root flare. The flare is the classic part of a tree trunk that flares out at ground level, away from the truck itself. An exposed root flare makes for a healthier tree. Ever see trees mulched with what looks like a mulch volcano? Ouch. Too much organic matter next to a tree truck only encourages fungi to attack the tree at its base...something all of us want to avoid on a newly planted tree!

If you're planting a raised bed for vegetables or herbs, remember to use untreated lumber so you dont have chemicals leaching into your veggie garden! Once you build your beds, a cheap trick to exclude weeds and block out grass is to put down cardboard or newspaper before adding your 50% / 50% mix of Planting Mix and topsoil. No real trick to placing the topsoil and PM in the beds, just add a bag of PM, then a bag of topsoil, and repeat until you have about half the bed full, then mix the two together with your shovel or digging fork, then repeat for the top half. Adding fertilizer at planting time to ensure banner harvests? Mix it into the planting hole just before you plant.

Want to read more about how to save water in the garden? Check out www.epa.gov/watersense/outdoor/landscaping_tips.html for helpful tips!

Getting planting fever from all this talk of planting? Get out there and get your hands dirty!

Organic Mechanics Container Blend Potting Soil!

The second product we introduced to the Organic Mechanics brand was our Container Blend Potting Soil. Launched in 2008, Container Blend (CB) was built for use in outdoor containers. It has increased drainage as compared to our Premium Blend Potting Soil, making it the natural choice for all your outdoor containers. CB has more aged pine bark and coconut husk fiber...less compost and worm castings...and was formulated for growing perennials, grasses, & woody plants.

We constantly hear reports of people using CB to grow native plants, especially perennials, without having to add fertilizer, yet still experiencing solid growth and flowering. However, if you are like me and jam a lot of small perennials into a giant container, you may want to give the plants a little bit of organic granular fertilizer, or liquid fertilizer like kelp, worm casting tea, or fish emulsion to ensure the container overflows with growth.

We pioneered Organic Mechanics Container Blend while working with The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College, www.scottarboretum.org. Their horticulture experts use Container Blend in all the big containers on campus. They add additional slow release fertilizer to get these containers reaching their fullest potential each summer. I love their use of mixed containers, sometimes planting tropicals, annuals, perennials in one big container...love that plant exuberance!

Another difference gardeners will notice in our Container Blend...we replaced the perlite (little white stuff) with rice hulls to make the mix more earth-friendly. These OMRI listed rice hulls are produced in the southern US, parboiled to get rid of weed seed and plant diseases, dried, compressed, and packaged for shipment. Giving these agricultural byproducts new life in our blends helps to lower our carbon footprint and gives the mix a lovely, fluffy texture.

How does using rice hulls make our product more earth-friendly you might ask? Using them reduces the amount of perlite we use. Perlite is a silica ore, mined from the ground, shipped to processing facilities, and "popped like popcorn" by heating the crushed ore to tempertures above 1000 degrees fahrenheit! While rice hulls may not be ideal in all applications, it works wonders in our Container Blend Potting Soil.

Even though we reduced the amount of compost and worm castings in this blend, you will still notice having to water much less as compared to peat-based mixes. Who doesn't love spending less time dragging hose around the garden!?! A story I always tell is from 2009 when my wife and I were out of town for a week in the middle of June. We left without finding someone to babysit our garden...don't know how that slipped my mind since we had about 300 plants in containers at the time...oh, yeah, that's right, its because we were going to get married! But I digress. 9 days out of town, only a passing shower or two, and everything planted in Organic Mechanics made it through...only a few new plants I hadn't yet repotted didn't make it. If you have similar stories from using Organic Mechanics, please share them with us!

Have beautiful containers planted up using Organic Mechanics Container Blend Potting Soil? Please share them on our facebook page, www.facebook.com/organicmechanicsoil

Until next time, get out there and get your hands dirty!

Organic Mechanics Premium Blend Potting Soil - OMRI Listed!

Our Premium Blend Potting Soil began rolling off the line back in 2007. A handful of retailers picked us up and we were born into the world of local, independent garden centers and natural food stores. We have come a long way since then, thanks to all of you who supported Organic Mechanics! We now offer four distinct retail products, Premium Blend Potting Soil, Container Blend Potting Soil, Planting Mix, and Worm Castings. The next few blog posts will cover each of our products in detail, to give gardeners a better understanding of our products and how to use them.
As I was saying, it all started with our Premium Blend Potting Soil. Like all our mixes, Premium Blend (PB) is compost-based. It also contains aged pine bark, worm castings, coconut husk fiber, and perlite. How is PB different than our Container Blend Potting Soil you might ask? They are both potting soils for container gardening, but PB has more compost and more worm castings as compared to Organic Mechanics Container Blend. As a result, PB holds moisture even longer than Container Blend, making PB a perfect choice for houseplants, small windowboxes, hanging baskets, tropicals, or for growing food in containers (tomatoes, peppers, etc, etc).
Using Organic Mechanics Premium Blend Potting Soil for the first time, gardeners will notice having to water about half as much. Can you imagine! Dragging the hose half as much during the heat of summer?! It’s true. The compost and worm castings hold water exceptionally well. Even though PB has excellent moisture retention, the pine bark and coconut fiber create pore space for the all important oxygen to get to plant roots. Just like us, plants need to breathe.
Learning to water properly is a skill worth its weight in gold. Too often, people love their plants to death by over-watering. How can you tell if a plant needs water? Certainly, if it’s wilting, it needs a drink. However, most plants are better off when they do not wilt in-between watering. Until you build up the experience to just know if a plant needs water, the easiest way to check is to use your finger to dig into the soil root ball, about 2-3 inches down. If you feel moisture, the plant is OK. If it is dry to the tip of your finger, it’s time to re-water. Here is a tip on knowing if you are feeling moisture or not. Go to the sink, place a single drop of water on your finger, give a quick shake of your hand, then feel your finger with your thumb. That residual moisture will be similar to what you would feel in the container if the plant was still OK. Check our website for a video on this process! http://www.organicmechanicsoil.com/tv-watering-organic-potting-soil.html

Wondering about fertilizer choices? As with all potting soils, you will want to fertilize if you are growing vegetables or annuals in PB. You don’t want two peppers…you want a dozen peppers, right!?! We recommend organic fertilizers to go along with the exceptional beneficial biology inside each bag. Visit your local independent garden center for the best selection of organic fertilizers and ask them to recommend a brand. I like liquid fish emulsion & worm castings for feeding my plants (and the microbes around their roots!), but Bradfield Organics is a great granular fertilizer for that extra punch to get those plants growing!
Next post…all about Organic Mechanics Container Blend! Until then, get out there and get your hands dirty!

Organic Gardening Magazine's Seal of Approval!

My first blog post of the year mentioned the award we received from Organic Gardening magazine, their newly created Seal of Approval! We are so honored to be the first company to receive this award. Why did OG give it to us? They were impressed by our commitment to organics, the environmentally sound composition of each blend, and the sustainable production practices we employ to get the job done each day.
What’s in Organic Mechanics Potting Soils and Soil Amendments?
If you have not yet tried a bag of Organic Mechanics, you might not know our products contain compost, aged pine bark, coconut husk fiber, worm castings, and finally, rice hulls or perlite.The compost is locally produced in Chester County, PA. The aged pine bark comes from Delaware (it says forest products on the label, just in case another type of bark gets harvested…birds will drop seeds in the midst of a pine field), and the coconut husk fiber comes from India. India you say? Seems like quite the distance…but when you dig deeper, one realizes this coconut husk fiber is compressed 5:1 before shipment and it is shipped by boat. Shipping by boat is very fuel-efficient, as compared to shipping by tractor-trailer. Also, the fiber dust we receive is the final by-product of coconut harvesting. You get coconut meat, oil, water, shell, fiber, and finally, the dust that gets dried and compressed before shipment to our production site.
Other ingredients include worm castings, rice hulls, and perlite. Worm castings are a nice way of saying worm poop…natures perfect soil amendment. They are chock full of beneficial biology to populate the root zone, breaking down organic matter and helping plants stay healthy. Rice hulls are the shell surrounding each delicious rice grain. The rice is grown in Arkansas and Louisiana, and the hulls are parboiled before packaging to remove any weed seeds or potential pathogens. Rice hulls replace perlite in most of our blends. Perlite is added to increase drainage in potting soils, but rice hulls also provide good drainage and make the mix nice and fluffy for plant roots. Perlite is very energy intensive to make, and since the rice hulls were available, we chose to use them in most of our blends to reduce our manufacturing carbon footprint.
Production Practices
When I started Organic Mechanics, I knew environmental sustainability had to be a core value of the company. For this reason we use recycled products whenever possible. Most of our ingredients are by-products of agriculture that we “upcycle” into our products. We use recycled pallets for shipping, 100% post-consumer recycled paper for all printing needs, and we purchase wind power for our electricity.
I also wanted us to use the most energy efficient methods of production. For this reason we chose an electric forklift (which is also better for employee health), and chose used diesel equipment when deciding on machines – so we could run them all on bio-diesel. All our diesel machines also have “scrubbers” on them, to clean the air emitted from the engines. We also have a waste-oil heater for our shop. Collected vegetable oil is filtered and burned in a very efficient heater that has kept the guys warm even during the depths of winter’s chill.
Speaking of the guys, I’ll have to dedicate an entire post to them later this summer. We could not do so much without “the dream team” in the shop. We have five full-time staff in the shop each day during the busy season. The guys make potting soil, keep everything stocked, load trucks, unload trucks, process orders, flip compost piles, bag up worm castings, and all the while make each other laugh and listen to great music. It’s a dirty job, but they do it with a smile. I did it for the first three years…and now I spend all my time behind a computer, on the road visiting garden centers, or at conferences and workshops educating people on the joys of organic gardening.
We hope you’ll join us on this sustainable gardening journey. If you don’t currently have a subscription to Organic Gardening magazine, pick up the current June/July issue at your favorite bookstore or retailer…you can read more about Organic Mechanics in the Profiles Department, and great topics like Container Gardening, Chanticleer (one of the most stunning public gardens around), delicious recipes, OG’s Farm-to-Fork tour of Italy, The Rodale Institute’s 30th anniversary of its Farming Systems Trial, and much, much more. Pick up a copy or get yourself a subscription! I guarantee you will not be disappointed. http://www.organicgardening.com/

Thousand Bloom Chrysanthemum at Longwood Gardens

There it is. The mythical thousand bloom Chrysanthemum on display at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. Longwood is the world's premier horticultural display garden, and looking at this shining example of horticultural prowess, one can see how they achieved this title.

This particular plant had 718 blooms on it, a personal record for Longwood's talented team of horticulturists. One staff member in particular has travelled to Japan numerous times to see all aspects of the production cycle, to truly understand each step of production. She is amazing and extremely dedicated! This is all done by hand, with a keen eye for details.

Producing thousand bloom Chrysanthemums is "old news" Japan, where the method is said to have originated. Though, anytime you see one plant with this many flowers on it, I dont care how many times you might have seen one...it is impressive and stops you in your tracks!


This second picture shows a little bit of the custom frame, fabricated by Longwood's skilled metal engineers. Each flower is held in place by a small circle of metal, which are attached to the main frame in a radial circular pattern.

How might they grow one plant to this gargantuan size and filled with blooms? As with all plants, it all begins with the quality of your soil or potting soil. They use Organic Mechanics Premium Blend to get this plant off to a great start and provide plenty of beneficial biology in the root zone. All that compost and worm castings helps product strong stems and big flowers!

The final picture is the closeup...a stunning addition to the always beautiful Chrysanthemum display at Longwood Gardens. If you missed it this year (as they have already begun the annual changeover to their Christmas display), never fear, as next year the thousand bloom mum will be back in another life, perhaps breaking a new record over 718 blooms. I know I cant wait to see if they do. Read more at www.longwoodgardens.org

National Recycling Day!

Did you know November 15th was National Recycling Day? http://www.americarecyclesday.org/ is a fun website to explore and see how your personal recycling efforts impact energy resource conservation. While we are all familiar with recycling newspapers, aluminum and metal cans, glass and plastic bottles, many of us need to find a local place to take our small mountains of plastic accumulated each year from normal gardening activities.


Many independent garden centers are now setting up collection stations, like this one at Bucks Country Gardens. They'll take all those plastic pots and flats liberated from the plants you put in the ground this year. My small pile is shown below...I like to keep a small supply around for repotting...but I was able to get rid of a nice chunk of my stash this year as part of National Recycling Day.


I hope you treat everyday like National Recycling Day. It may not seem like an individual contribution matters, but http://www.americarecyclesday.org/ will show you the exact impact you make as an individual. Then if you multiply that by just 25% of the US population, it makes a huge impact!

We recycle high-quality agricultural by-products back into Organic Mechanics potting soils, to make them more sustainable and decrease our carbon footprint. Compost is recycled agricultural waste products, made from farm waste & food waste. We recycle all the plastic we receive as packaging material. We also use recycled vegetable oil to heat our production facility. We like to think of it as resource recovery...as these valuable products are not waste, but organic substances waiting for reuse and recovery.

To further decrease your personal carbon footprint, look for products and/or packaging made from recycled materials. Collectively, we CAN make a difference! How much will you recycle this year?

Mo-Greena Foundry - Organic Mechanics Home Base

I love big machines. What can I say, I am just a big kid at heart when I see these awesome earth moving machines do work. You can just tell when a highly skilled operator is running a piece of equipment...when the machine is just an extension of what the person is willing the machine to do. Smooth movements that almost look computerized are the pinnacle of equipment operation!

These two monster machines were on our warehouse property to do some work! We graded the entire back 2 acres to get ready for further expansion efforts. What was once hilly, uneven terrain is now flat as a pancake. Can you say soccer field during break time! Well, not completly smooth, it is actually sloped away from the mid point for better drainage. Bioswales control water runoff along the edges. Native riparian plants placed along the bioswales help to absorb excess water. This area will serve as additional storage, as well as future greenhouse space!

This is but a small phase of Operation Property Transformation...so stay turned for future visual updates!