My first New Years Resolution is to make sure that someone proofreads my newsletter before it goes online.

My second resolution is to try harder to get my neighbors off of harsh chemicals that can contaminate the creeks that run through our neighborhood.

How am I going to do this? By bitching.

Every time I see one of those green and white trucks go by my house, I am going to walk in the direction that they came from, and look on the sidewalks for tell tale signs of the products applied by that company. I will knock on my neighbor’s door and show them the residual left behind. If they are not there I will leave a note on their door and call the company that applied the product and ask them to have some one come back and sweep the sidewalks.

I will explain to my neighbor that this excess fertilizer will blow and wash onto the street and into the storm drains and directly into our creeks. Then I will try to educate my neighbors that not only will the fertilizers, but also the nasty fungicides, herbicides and insecticides that have been included in their fertilizing program, damage the water and harm aquatic life by depleting oxygen in the water.

I want my neighbors to know that the contract that they have for 9 applications a year is unnecessary and that they are being ripped off. If you can get the lawn away from the chemical dependency and add organic mater to the soil, within time that organic soil will supply all the nutrients needed by your lawn and garden.I want my neighbors to know that applying organic fertilizers reduces the likelihood of pollution in our creeks. I want my neighbors to know that fertilizing 3 or 4 times a year is sufficient. They need to know how to tell when a lawn needs fertilizing by looking for signs such as slow growth and fading green color in the grass.

I want my neighbors to know that when those green and white trucks fertilize before a rain, that the rain can wash chemical fertilizers off your yard and into the creek. Do you think that they are going to come back and reapply? No, because most of my neighbors do not pay attention to the day that the green and white truck came by, and by the time they receive their bills they forgot that it rained on that day.

With organic fertilizers the rain actually dissolves the granule in the spot where it was applied.I want my neighbors to know that soils that have organic matter applied to them can become loose enough to soak up water and nutrients.I want my neighbors to know that every sprinkler system has an on-off switch and they should learn how to use it. I want every neighbor to know when to water and when it is not necessary to water.My New Year wish is that anyone that reads this would give a copy to any neighbor whether this neighbor is practicing organic lawn care or not. I wish that anyone that reads this took the time to trace the tracks of those green and white trucks and make sure that they did not leave any amount of fertilizer pellets on the sidewalk or driveway and call them up to have them clean their toxic waste when necessary.I want to thank anyone that lets even one neighbor know that his or her toxic waste is no longer tolerated.

Things to Do in January

Plant:This is an ideal month to plant trees. January is a good time to select and plant trees and shrubs. Because shrubs and trees are dormant, the plants suffer less stress and have more time to put out new roots before the summer. These roots will help the plant find water during the hot, dry months of July, August and September.

Fruit trees can be purchased as bare root (a plant that has all the soil around its roots removed). Many fruit trees and roses are sold bare-root in the winter.

If you are starting an orchard buy a couple of extra trees in case some do not make it.

Start early while the selection is good. Do some homework. See what fruit trees grow best in your area. Karen, our buyer at Rohde’s, goes through three lists:

Howard Garrett’s, Neil Sperry’s and Texas A&’s. She picks out the trees that all three recommend.

Shade Trees should grow large enough to cool off the house or an area of the lawn that you use to sit down and relax. Find a tree that will best fit your needs. Do you want it to shade a window in the winter? Do you want privacy from a neighbors view? How much room does it have to grow?

Plan ahead. When you select your plant make sure you know enough about the plant to keep you out of trouble. For easier lawn maintenance, eliminate the hard to mow spaces such as angles around beds and borders. Combine single trees or shrubs into large plantings connected by ground covers. Consult a designer or a Landscape Architect. Get on their list now so that you will have your plan ready for work to begin early in the year.

We recommend Carol Feldman.

Winter Plant Protection:Protect your plants from cold winds. Use row cover or a sheet to protect your tender plant material and do not forget to water a plant before freezing temperatures arrive. Watering is very important for a cold plant. The plant needs water to help circulation and keep it alive in cold periods.

Trees, Live Oak and Red Oak:The freezing temperatures that we experienced in December have made this a perfect time to trim Live Oaks and Red Oaks. Because of the chances of hard freezes next year or even the year after I would take advantage and do some heavy trimming. However, I must remind you that tree trimming benefits you and your property but does not benefit the tree.

If you have a branch that is growing towards the house, driveway, sidewalk or any area where the branch may damage property or injure someone, remove it now.

Make sure that you find the collar at the base of the branch and the tree trunk where you are going to make the cut. Cut on the outside of the collar. If you are removing a very long and heavy branch make sure that you cut the branch into sections so that the weight of the branch does not tear at the bark that you want left behind.

SPRAY DORMANT OIL on fruit trees and other plants that might have over wintering pests. Do not blanket spray, which means only spray the affected plants and not the entire landscape. If you have released beneficial insects do not use dormant oil. Always read the instructions of any product that you are going to use.

Bareroot Planting

reprinted from Issue #14

We bring bareroot trees into our nursery during the month of January and hope to sell out by March 1st. This time period is excellent for buying and transplanting bare root trees. The price is normally three times cheaper then buying a container grown or balled and burlap tree or vine. The selection is great but it is first come, first serve. To be honest there is very little difference between one tree and the other, leading you to believe that these trees are cloned. I do not want to reveal my sources, but these trees come from one of the oldest and most respected growers in the US.

Here are some tips to planting and caring for bareroot trees:

The most important thing to remember is that you must not let roots of bareroot trees dry out even for a short while. That does not mean that you should break a hole in the bag that they came in and fill them with water, like we did. Duuuuuhh! Before we realized what had happened we noticed that the trunks of 6 trees were turning black. Upon inspection we noticed that someone had filled the bags full of water that the bare root trees had come in, drowning them.

Keep them in moist, organic matter or dig a shallow trench and bury the roots temporarily before planting. Try to keep them upright so that the sun does not burn the exposed surface. Do not lay them flat!

Never plant in soils that are so wet that the water will run into the hole as you dig.

Plant high; keeping the crown area above the original soil line, this is the transitional section where the trunk develops into roots. This area should be kept as dry as possible, especially in the spring when the tree is leafing out. If you take the time to look you will see that there is a different color between the lower section of the tree (root) and the trunk.

All fruits, nuts and berries will benefit from mound or raised bed planting. When you plant in a mound you prevent puddling near the trunk and crown of the tree.

Make sure the roots of the tree are going in the proper direction. Big roots should go downwards for anchoring, small hairy roots should be planted spread out and not in a clump, so make sure that the hole is deep enough for the tap root and wide enough to permit all the hair roots adequate separation, so that roots do not become twisted in the hole, and grow in circles.

Add rock phosphate to the soil, so that it is in direct contact with the roots. If you use the rock phosphate do not use a root stimulator.

Back fill the soil adding some organic matter to the same soil that you dug out.

Prune any broken branches near a bud. Do not over prune.

Never forget to mulch over the root zone and as the leaves come out spray with a mild solution of fish and kelp.

It's Time to Think about Spring and Summer Fruit

Don Trotter

Hello fellow Earthlings, and welcome to the first installment of a three part series on the care of your deciduous fruit trees during the winter months. This is so that you can reap wonderful, tasty harvests in the spring and summer.

Winter is the season when our deciduous fruit trees are supposed to be dormant. This week we are going into the soil to help our trees during the growing season and also to prevent some soil borne pests from attacking while the trees are supposed to be sleeping. Do not ever worry again if your fruit trees have foliage or fruit on them this late in the year. The following steps will help you to be more knowledgeable about your fruit trees and maybe understand them a little better when they act up.

Step 1: Get out your garden hose and a high pressure or sweeper type nozzle. Attach the nozzle onto the hose and turn on the pressure. Head down to where your fruit trees are and begin blasting them with this sharp jet of water. Lots of leaves will fall off of the tree; those that are stubborn and will not come off should be left for dormant spraying (which will be covered next issue).

Step 2: Count how many fruit trees that you have and measure the diameter of each tree's trunk at 12 inches above the soil level. This step is for calculating the amounts of good stuff you will need at the garden center before you go there. It is always nice when only one trip to the store is necessary to do one's chores. I just hate running all over town, unless there is a sale at my favorite nurseries, which happen to be in different parts of the county. All of the materials that are recommended in this column are available at Farm and Garden Supply stores just about everywhere. If you have trouble locating some of the materials, give me a buzz, I'll do what I can to help you find a place in your area. . Once you have your counts and sizes all written down it is time for our next step.

Step 3: This is the step where we find out how much stuff we need to get at the garden supply store. The following recipe for your fruit trees is figured so that you may multiply it by the inches of trunk diameter for your trees:

1-cup Fossilized Kelp (Kelzyme), agricultural Gypsum, or Lime per inch trunk dia.
1-cup Soft Rock Phosphate or 2 cups Bone Meal per inch trunk dia
One half cup Sul-Po-Mag per inch trunk dia.
One quarter cup Soil Sulfur per inch trunk dia.
2-cups Feather Meal per inch trunk dia.
2-cups Cottonseed Meal per inch trunk diameter.

All OF THE ABOVE PRODUCTS ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH ROHDE’S WEBSITE.

Once you have returned home with your load of goodies, it is time to mix them or to apply them directly to the soil around your trees. Apply the mixture or separate ingredients to the soil at the "drip line" of the tree. That is the area below the outside perimeter of the branches. Lightly rake the materials into the soil and water thoroughly. You can cover this with a thin layer of compost or mulch as well. You are DONE! Your fruit trees will only need this feeding once a year to ensure good quality fruit and a healthy tree. After harvest you apply a simple nitrogen fertilizer like Blood meal or Alfalfa Meal, and you have given your trees the best diet they could ever ask for in any climate. And the really great thing is that everything is 100% organic! Don't forget the Mulch!

Next time we will discuss dormant spraying these same trees. See you in the Garden!

Got Questions? Email the Doc at Curly@mill.net Don Trotter's natural gardening columns are printed nationally in environmentally sensitive publications. Check out Don's books Natural Gardening A-Z and The Complete Natural Gardener for lots of other helpful tips to tend your garden without chemicals. Both are available at all bookstores and on line booksellers from Hay House Publishing.

The Basic Organic Program for 2001

With the New Year we should review our organic techniques and procedures. We should always remember that these ideas are not a static concept. New methods are constantly being designed and developed. We should also experiment with ways to allow nature to flourish, since no program is perfect, save for Mother Nature’s own.

Soil health is the greatest single factor in the organic program. Soil health affects all life – plant, animal, and man. All three groups are fed by derivatives of the soil. Synthetic programs view the soil as merely an anchor to hold the plant upright.

If you have been practicing organic methods and some things still are not right, it may be a good time to consider a soil test that includes cation exchange capacities (CEC) results. We recommend Texas Plants and Soil Lab; they can be reached at (956) 383-0739. Extension service labs currently rely primarily on pH levels, which give no information about available nutrients. Most clay soils have an abundance of minerals unavailable due to calcium/magnesium imbalance. Clay soils respond to elemental sulfur. Sandy soils require applications of high calcium lime.

Another factor of soil health is microbial activity, which breaks down organic matter into humus, then humic acid, and then basic elements. This is a process known as mineralization. One tablespoon of healthy soil contains 50 billion microbes. This helps create a balance of physics, chemistry, and biology necessary to all life. You can increase your microbial population by applying Green Sense Lawn & Garden Microbial Treatment.

Healthy soil will show slightly acidic pH levels of between 6.2 and 6.5 (pH of 7 is considered to be neutral.) Of available chemical nutrients calcium is 60-70%, magnesium 10-20%, potassium 2-5%, sodium .5-3%, with trace elements in proper proportions. This ideal medium will be ± 45% minerals, ± 25% water, ± 25% air, ± 5% organic matter, and ± 1% microorganisms. Howard Garrett says that in an organic program you do not have to worry so much about pH levels because they will naturally balance out after a while.

Established organic programs require minimal replenishment of organic materials. Four applications per year at 20 lbs. per 1,000 square feet will usually suffice. We of course recommend alternating Green Sense 524 and 624 Products. Earthworm castings can be an excellent supplement. Of course, finished compost is Mother Nature’s preferred choice.

Trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, and even lawn grass, will benefit greatly from monthly foliar feeding. Seaweed has been shown to be the superior choice, particularly seaweed derived from ascophylum nodosum. Fish emulsion and manure compost tea are also excellent choices. Add a little apple cider vinegar for an additional boost. I like to combine and/or rotate these products for maximum results. My trombone sprayer simplifies the process, but almost any sprayer will work. Always clean the sprayer after use, by flushing with water and a little hydrogen peroxide.

Last but not least, consider a bio-stimulant such as Green Sense Microboost, which stimulates microorganisms, and basic soil and plant functions. Medina and Agri-Gro are also excellent choices.

In all cases, product diversity is preferred method. Nature relies on variety and dynamic stability, and so should we. A complex mix of animals, plants, insects, and microorganisms leads to the important state of what we call bio-diversity. Soccer Fields and the City

Aside from my wife and kids I have two big passions in life: soccer and gardening (the “natural way” of course). I love digging my hands into the soil in my yard, planting trees, shrubs and flowers, feeding my plants and making my neighborhood more beautiful (who else do you know that plants roses and irises in the alley?).

I have been involved in soccer as a player, coach, referee and administrator for many years. As I approach age 50 I am no longer a player or a coach, but am still very active as a referee and a league administrator in the Dallas area. My “home association” is the Dallas East Soccer Association (DESA). It plays at Hobby Fields at the corner of Northwest Highway and Garland Rd., very near Rohde’s Nursery.

These 14 fields host nearly three thousand young players, their coaches, parents and friends every weekend, 20 weeks per year. The adult men’s and coed leagues also play there on the weekends. All of this adds up to quite a lot of stress on the fields each week in the soccer season. The city of Dallas Parks and Recreation Department is responsible for maintenance and upkeep—watering (infrequently and inefficiently), fertilizing (the finest chemicals a low priority budget item will allow), trash clean up (at least whatever lands inside the cans), and so on. As we all know, the city is not friendly to organic grounds keeping. In fact, they seem downright hostile to it. Twice a year the city dumps a couple of thousand pounds of chemical fertilizer on the fields and a handful of workers spread it on the fields. The soccer league foots the bill for aerating the fields two or three times a year and for sowing winter rye and Bermuda in the spring. The city shuts Hobby down in the summer for about three months and over the winter from December through January. The children of DESA and their families spend over $15,000 per year for seed, fertilizer and aeration. This money comes out of our general fund—out of the player’s pockets, literally and figuratively.

All three of my children played soccer in DESA over the past 14 years. None of them play there now, however (one is in college, one doesn’t play soccer any more, and one plays in the select league in Plano). There is one constant every year, without fail. Every season the fields look pretty green and healthy on opening day. By the third or fourth week the fields are starting to show signs of wear and tear. By the end of the season the fields look terrible. The middle of the fields is nothing but rutted dirt. The periphery is still green but close inspection clearly shows the grass is not healthy. The playing surface is uneven and far too compacted. The sidelines are in terrible shape—I am not joking when I say the uneven pitch is difficult, maybe even dangerous, to run on. Cracks in the dirt frequently appear, some are more than two inches wide and several inches deep.

Most of the Board members and the city workers just say, “Well, what do you expect with all these players out here week after week, month after month?” My long experience with organic methods tells me what I could expect. If the soil was healthy, alive with microorganisms, earthworms, and so on the grass would always be lush, thick and green, despite the pounding the fields get some 24 weeks out of the year. If the city would spread clean dirt between seasons, instead of the rock-laden trash dirt it always puts out there, the fields would be level and healthy, not covered in ruts and pits as it invariably is. If the city would put out lava sand, green sand and the other wonderful soil amendments we are all so well familiar with, the fields would hold their moisture and promote the bio-diversity we know is essential to healthy yards and gardens. Instead of being packed down because there is no life in the fields, the ground would be soft and yielding. (I can’t tell you how many times I have heard players remark that doing a slide tackle on Hobby is like sliding on asphalt, and they have the “cherries” on their thighs and butts to prove it.) Most organic yards are soft and level, green and lush.

Today, December 10, Hobby Fields are brown and lifeless. The fields are closed down until mid February. Parks and Rec will dump more chemicals out there, water occasionally, and hope for the best. In February, when the kids’ and adult leagues start back up, Hobby will still be brown and lifeless, hard as a rock, covered in cracks and ruts and pits. But we all know it doesn’t have to be that way. Soil that is free of chemical contamination, and is alive with earthworms and other small organisms is more resistant to compacting, smoothes itself more readily with watering and rain, and is less likely to form cracks and crevices. The organic approach would actually save the city and the soccer players a lot of money by reducing the need for costly repairs and producing a proactive approach to grounds keeping rather than a reactive approach.

The city of Plano and the Plano Youth Soccer Association spent 1.4 million dollars just one year ago getting their biggest complex (Russell Creek) ready to host one of the most prestigious and most important soccer tournaments in the country last spring. During the week-long tournament everyone was very complimentary on how wonderful the fields and facilities looked. By the end of the spring season most of the fields showed the wear and tear quite clearly. Today there are large areas of bare dirt on most of the fields. Why? Nothing but chemicals was applied to the fields.

The story is the same all across the Metroplex. A lack of understanding of the organic way of caring for parks and recreation areas contributes to general decline in the high traffic areas. Places like White Rock Lake look very nice most of the time, but they never get nearly the foot traffic that soccer fields get.

At Hobby, about one-dozen red oaks and another dozen crepe myrtles were planted almost fifteen years ago. These were four and five foot saplings when they were planted. Today, these trees, the ones still surviving, anyway, are about ten to twelve feet tall. When the kids at the park climb on them it is not unusual for limbs to break—on the trees that is. None of them have grown or developed the way I would have expected

Just shy of two years ago one of the nicest, most loving and generous men who ever lived died suddenly of a heart attack, at age 51. He had been closely involved with DESA for 20 years. He had coached several teams, been on our Board of Directors, and been a referee at Hobby-- even when he lived in Grand Prairie and Arlington. We decided to plant a memorial tree in his honor. I chose a twelve-foot tall live oak tree; the trunk was about 8 inches in diameter. In the year and a half since the tree was planted it has grown over a foot and the trunk now is ten inches in diameter. I go out to the field three or four times a season to make sure it is well watered. I put fresh compost and cedar bark mulch around the base of the tree every six months. I have created a fifty-foot circumference “chemical free zone” around my old friends tree by spreading activated charcoal, lava sand and green sand, molasses and other soil amendments. I foliar feed it at least once a month. This is the healthiest tree in the entire park, and it gives me pleasure to sit under it and watch the games, or to just sit there and meditate. When you pass by on Northwest Highway or Garland Rd., look for the green live oak and smile and say a little prayer for Augie and the kids.

My yard is always the greenest in the neighborhood just as I am sure yours is also—because of the organic programs we have learned and trust. It never ceases to amaze me that places like Dallas, conservative bastions that they are, continue to cling to the old organo-phobe methods that have been shown to do long-term damage to plants, the soil and the animals that live on the soil. Every time I see a player examining a “cherry” after a hard slide-tackle I cringe and remind them to wash it out very well because I know what kind of harsh and unpleasant things have just been ground into their flesh.

I have tried to talk to the groundskeepers and the “powers-that-be” about adopting organic methods. The answers are probably scripted, they are so similar: “It’s not up to me….”, “Its too expensive,” “The fertilizer we use is just fine”, “That doesn’t work”…. I used to say the same things. Now, however, my wife and I have been completely and happily organic for ten years. I am convinced of the superiority of “the natural way” and try to bring in others when ever possible.

If you and your children play, recreate or otherwise enjoy the city’s many parks and recreation facilities, please take the time to urge the managers, grounds keepers, your city councilman or anyone else who might listen to ditch the chemicals, to quit killing the soil and water, and to “go natural”! It is our money that is leaching into the ground water and lakes. It is our money that is ruining the soil. It is our money that is being absorbed in the scrapes and “cherries” that all soccer players get from time to time—especially on rough and hard fields like Hobby. We all know that if the parks departments would adopt organic methods everyone would benefit—now and over the long haul.

As a former political science professor I know that politicos respond when enough voters complain. This is a free country, exercise your freedom and urge the city to go natural.

Don Dixon
Dallas, TX

Walk with Me

I don't remember much about my father. Let's just say he wasn't a family man and leave it at that. He lived in the same house with us until I was 9 but hardly spent any time with us.

Because I was the youngest son, I really don't have many memories of my father, and the few I do have I would just as soon not share. Not that I was abused or neglected. I wasn't. To the contrary, I had a happy childhood, all thanks to my mother.

Possibly because of those memories, I always insisted that I was not going to be rushed into marriage and as a result did not marry until I was 30. Once married though, we wasted no time in starting a family. Sandra, my wife, conceived during our honeymoon in Aruba and due to toxemia, our daughter

Assisi was born eight months later.

I wanted more than anything to be a good father to Assisi and spend as much time with my family as possible. From the beginning I took it upon myself to be the one to get up in the middle of the night to change her diaper and give her the bottle she craved so badly, hoping to form a bond with her that would last forever.

Three years later, my son Victor was born. Assisi had long since become very attached to her mother and insisted on sitting next to her anywhere we went. Feeling rejected, I decided to make Victor my son, and hoped that we would love the same things. That we would spend time together. That we would be more than father and son. We would be best friends.

As the years went by, Assisi's attachment to her mother grew stronger and I began to feel hurt and rejected by some of her actions, even though I understand that they are a result of adolescence and because I don't give in to her every little whim.

Victor and I on the other hand grew closer. He doesn't ask for as much and accepts it easily if I deny his requests. He seems to actually enjoy my company. Could it be because I have spent more time with him than with Assisi? I really hope the onset of adolescence doesn't alter the bond between Victor and me.

In July, Victor and I drove to Houston to tour the Johnson Space Center. Space has always interested Victor. We spent the day there, doing everything there was to do. We had a great time and were so tired when we returned to our hotel that we fell asleep immediately.

The next morning we awoke early because I wanted to tour the Antique Rose Emporium's display gardens in Brenham. Victor was asleep as we pulled into the driveway, but awoke when I stopped. I asked him to put on his shoes so that we could tour the gardens. 'No daddy, I want to sleep,' was his response to me. Nothing I tried could pry him from the car, so I set off by myself to tour the gardens.

In the very first garden I spied a Wolf spider that had caught a huge moth in its web. Excited, I ran back to the car to tell Victor, but nothing I said proved interesting enough to rouse him from his slumbers. Rejected, I hurriedly finished my tour and drove back to Dallas, skipping, I suppose intentionally, an intended tour of Blue Bell's Ice Cream Plant. The only stop we made on the way back was for a hamburger at a fast food restaurant.

I'm not complaining, really. There are lots of things that Victor and I enjoy doing together. Just the other day, when I found out his school had an early release day, I picked him up and we went to a movie. That day turned out to be one of the wettest days in November history with 3" of rain. I was in my Jeep, so when we passed a field already rutted with dirt bike tracks, I decided Victor would enjoy four-wheeling. Big mistake! Not only did he accuse me of acting immature, he also complained that he was scared and wanted out of the Jeep. After a few more minutes, Victor's constant complaining took all the pleasure of the joyride out of it for me, so we headed home.

Not to be defeated, I spotted a new field with dirt bike tracks, which offered a short cut to home. Of course I took it. Two hundred feet later, we were mired axle deep in the mud with no hope of getting out.

Victor immediately let me know that he thought I was being very immature and informed me that I was going to be in deep trouble when mommy found out. Then he asked how we were supposed to get home? How we were going to get the Jeep out of the mud? And who was going to clean his shoes?

As we started off through the mud, we sunk to our knees and started slipping and sliding around. The mud sucked the shoes right off our feet. To my amazement, we actually started enjoying the experience and ended up having a good time.

We managed to hitch a ride home in the back of some good Samaritan's pickup. I asked him to drop us off at the alley near my home. Victor was by now happy and excited about our adventure. We had become coconspirators.

As we walked down the alley towards home, Victor began to talk in a serious manner; "Daddy, slow down and walk with me. If you walk too fast, I'll walk behind you." "If I walk too fast, you will walk behind me!" As I tried to figure out the meaning of his statement, he continued, "If you walk with me we will walk together."

I realized that my soon to be 13 years old son was telling me that we can do things together as long as they are things we both enjoy.

It never occurred to me that my son would have different likes and dislikes than I do, but in the next few days I noticed that as I read a book, he was involved in a computer game. That while I enjoyed a particular food, he did not. I have come to realize that Victor is growing up.

The organic movement is very similar to Victor's search for independence. When I first started using an organic program there were very few products to choose from and very few retailers that carried them because no one knew what they were for or how to use them.

Later, when I purchased the 'Green Sense' trademark and began developing a line of organic gardening products, I found that some retailers refused to carry Green Sense Products because they felt they were supporting their competitor. But as they began to recognize the value of my products, they began recommending them over those of my competitors and would sometimes even ask me to come up with a special formulation that would address a specific need of theirs.

Twelve years late the industry has matured. More and more, gardening retailers are committed to the organic movement and some, like Rohde's and Green Sense, have 'taken the plunge' and become totally organic.

We still have a long way to go. But Rohde's Nursery and Nature Store has grown steadily throughout the years and Green Sense Products are now distributed to retailers over several states through an established distribution network.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that five years ago, Rohde's walked alone. Today, more of us are "Walking together."