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.

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/

Our ingredients: Compost, Worm Castings, Rice Hulls, and Coconut Fiber

I thought it might be interesting for people to see pictures of our raw ingredients, used to make Organic Mechanics premium potting soils. On the right we have a picture of beautiful compost. Note the dark rich color and small particle size.

This next picture shows our rice hulls, an ingredient in our Container Blend.

These rice hulls are parboiled to remove any weed seed and diseases that may have been on the rice. It is just the shell of the rice grain. These rice hulls come from Arkansas! They make Organic Mechanics Container Blend very fluffy and improve drainage. We use them in some of our mixes in place of perlite to increase the earth-friendlyness of our Blends. They will break down slowly over time and leave pore space for water and oxygen exchange.

Next we have a close up of pure worm castings! If you look closely you can see the individual castings! Worm castings are a plants best friend. Castings help retain moisture and are a vital source of beneficial biology. Check out how to make "worm casting tea" for your plants, instructions on our Products page. Organic Mechanics Premium Blend Potting Soil contains the optimum amount of worm castings, so no additional amending is required to grow perfect herbs and veggies.




Finally we have a picture of the coconut husk fiber. Coconut husk fiber is a by-product of the coconut industry. Each coconut has multiple products used to make many things from food to makeup to potting soil. The products are coconut oil, coconut meat, coconut shell, coconut fiber, and finally coconut dust/fiber. This amazing product is dried and compressed before shipping to us. Each block expands over 4 times its size, just like those sponges shaped like animals you put in water when you were a kid.

If you find a small nugget of coconut fiber or compost in Organic Mechanics, simply break up gently as you are potting your plants.

Next time you put your hands into a bag of Organic Mechanics, see if you can spot these ingredients!