Monday, June 29, 2009

Gardening is a manly pursuit.

As my yard becomes more and more the perennial garden I've been slowly creating over the years, I've been more and more interested in practicing organic gardening. After all, the whole idea of my perennial garden yard is to create something that not only is easier to maintain, but also self-sustaining and, above all, beautiful and safe. We've got kids that like to go out in the yard, and cats ,and I want to encourage animals (yes, even squirrels and chipmunks) to live in our yard.

The hardest part of organic gardening is roses. I've got one rose bush and I'm getting a few more, because nothing says "beautiful" and "classy" like roses. But roses are tough to take care of. So I don't mess around. I found this website run by Safer, and they have all kinds of organic gardening tips and products available, like the aphid control products they've got.

Everyone thinks of aphids as cute little bugs that wouldn't harm a flea and serve as pets to ants. (Well, everyone who's watched A Bug's Life 173 times.) But they'll kill a plant deader than the crowd at a Madonna concert.

Safer has sprayable soap for taking care of aphids (and other bugs like grasshoppers) and getting them off plants -- all without using pesticides that'll poison the plants, the air, the ground, and my kids.

I was losing the battle with my roses -- they were wilting and droopy and never bloomed much, and I was thinking I was going to have to pull them out, because I'd rather not have roses if it means using pesticides. But after a little bit of organic gardening, the roses are doing fine and I can still let the Babies! out in the yard to play.

I didn't just stumble across Safer like I usually find sites, either. They were mentioned on "Designing Spaces," which showed all the OMRI Listed® Organic pest control products Safer has in one recent show. Just watch:

No comments: