Organic Gardening

If you call the brown stuff that plants grow in soil (not dirt) and you refer to beneficial insects (instead of bugs), and you've begun making pilgrimages to Fresh Fields stores to buy organic yummies, then you'll want to head up to Kutztown on Saturday for GardenFest, a daylong celebration of organic gardening. If you're not quite there - you just have some vague sense that organic gardeners shy away from chemical pesticides and fertilizers - then the Rodale Institute Research Center's annual festival offers the chance to absorb some basic hands-on, hands-in-the-dirt (er, soil)

Leapin' toads! One hundred and fifty varieties of hot peppers? This is the Philadelphia Flower Show, for Pete's sake, not some '60s enclave. Yet tucked in a not inconspicuous corner at the annual floral convention of the area's top horticultural gurus is a new variety of exhibitor. Organic Gardening magazine, the publication of Rodale Press, is making a splashy entrance that consists of hot peppers, fiery-hot peppers and volcano-caliber hot peppers. Not for this down-home outfit are the showy orchids of the Flower Show central exhibit, or the English borders of delphinium and old roses that for years have been the darlings of the show.

Rodale will branch out into Martha Stewart territory this fall with the launch of Organic Style magazine - a new publication grown from the splitting into two of its six-decades-old magazine, Organic Gardening. The new glossy lifestyle magazine, aimed primarily at well-heeled, well-educated young female readers, will offer a mix of beauty, fashion, food, home design, gardening and travel, all on an organic theme. "A lot of the lifestyle magazines out there for women are very superficial - they're about how things can look, not about how to have a really joyful, fulfilled life," says company vice chairman Maria Rodale, who conceived the new format.

There's long been an overlap between the interests of flora fanatics and food fiends. So this year, the Philadelphia Flower Show has ramped up its culinary offerings. Gourmands interested in dirt-digging will want to see the 40-foot hydroponic lettuce and herb wall. It is near a garden featuring vegetables, including a trellis of tiny tomatoes, grown out of boots, buckets, and more. (BYO salad dressing.) Those who prefer the stove to the soil should check the schedule for happenings in the Culinary Room, which is being presented by Organic Gardening magazine.

William Membrino, 83, of Havertown, a retired controller for Diaphane Bag Co., died April 16 at his home. Mr. Membrino was born in 1904 in Boston and had lived in Havertown for the last 43 years. Prior to World War II, he worked for the Army Air Force Technical Command, where he taught numerous courses in aviation mechanics. During that time, he flew both biplanes and triplanes and was a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He began working for Diaphane in 1944 and retired at age 70. Mr. Membrino was an avid gardener, conservationist and outdoorsman.

* A wall of lettuce. Bethenny Frankel's Skinnygirl cocktails. And Bethenny Frankel herself, too. "Iron Chef America" competitor Edward Lee from Louisville, Ky.'s 610 Magnolia. A Hawaiian-centric restaurant. Experts from Organic Gardening magazine. There's more than just flowers at the 2012 Philadelphia International Flower Show, Sunday through March 12 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (12th & Arch streets). The theme is "Hawaii: Islands of Aloha. " 215-988-8899, theflowershow.com . * Atlantic City Restaurant Week, Sunday through March 10, showcases more than 65 Atlantic County restaurants with $15.12 lunches and $33.12 dinners.

Ugh. A convoy of slugs rolls into your garden, exuding lettuce-lust. But this time, don't just reach for the trusty Metaldehyde or Methiocarb (slug bait). Get 'em drunk instead. Dead drunk. All you have to do, according to the experts at Organic Gardening magazine, is fill a tin can with beer, sink it in the dirt up to the rim, and wait. From the perspective of these guzzling gastropods, even a tender leaf of lettuce can't match a sample of the suds. The offending mollusks will simply slither over to the can, topple in - and drown.

Charlie Haas loves lima beans. Every year he plants rows and rows of the legume in his cluttered garden, harvesting more beans than his five children, nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren can eat. One year a voracious intruder, the Mexican bean beetle, threatened to do what his prodigious offspring couldn't: devour the whole crop. Haas could have blasted the bugs south of the border with a commercial pesticide. Instead, he concocted his own organic brew, a potion so vile that the beetles took one sniff and vamoosed.

EMMAUS, Pa. - The rain had paused here sufficiently one day last week for Maria Rodale to sit on the stone wall where she'd played as a child; where the fountainhead farm of America's organic movement still brings forth a ration of breakfast eggs for her family, and the greenhouse yields spring sorrel, arugula, and early-ripening tomatoes called Fourth of Julys. She was taking a break from a board meeting of the nearby Lehigh County Hospital, the pieties of patient-centered care the topic du jour.

"Mudman" the flower child. "Mudman" with a green thumb. Somehow, the images clash with the police description of this big, burly, bearded and tattooed anti-social biker with a rap sheet as long as a climbing wisteria. Yet, there he was, daintily opening a sunflower, swigging cider with prison do-gooders, looking like a Neanderthal trying to smile as he discussed, of all things, gardening. Robert R. "Mudman" Simon, 43, who once put a bullet through the head of a girlfriend who wouldn't have sex with his buddies and is suspected of killing a cop in New Jersey Saturday night, worked in the organic garden outside Graterford prison, where he was serving a sentence for murder.

* A wall of lettuce. Bethenny Frankel's Skinnygirl cocktails. And Bethenny Frankel herself, too. "Iron Chef America" competitor Edward Lee from Louisville, Ky.'s 610 Magnolia. A Hawaiian-centric restaurant. Experts from Organic Gardening magazine. There's more than just flowers at the 2012 Philadelphia International Flower Show, Sunday through March 12 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (12th & Arch streets). The theme is "Hawaii: Islands of Aloha. " 215-988-8899, theflowershow.com . * Atlantic City Restaurant Week, Sunday through March 10, showcases more than 65 Atlantic County restaurants with $15.12 lunches and $33.12 dinners.

There's long been an overlap between the interests of flora fanatics and food fiends. So this year, the Philadelphia Flower Show has ramped up its culinary offerings. Gourmands interested in dirt-digging will want to see the 40-foot hydroponic lettuce and herb wall. It is near a garden featuring vegetables, including a trellis of tiny tomatoes, grown out of boots, buckets, and more. (BYO salad dressing.) Those who prefer the stove to the soil should check the schedule for happenings in the Culinary Room, which is being presented by Organic Gardening magazine.

Jeff Gillman already has a reputation as a garden troubleshooter, having separated truth from myth and fiction in earlier books about garden remedies, organic gardening and environmental policy. Now comes Decoding Gardening Advice: The Science Behind the 100 Most Common Recommendations, which is set for publication by Timber Press in January ($16.95) and can be preordered online. Gillman, who grew up in Pughtown, Chester County, is a horticulturist and entomologist who teaches at the University of Minnesota.

AQUEBOGUE, N.Y. - It started with an ad on Craigslist: Free holiday on an organic farm on Long Island, work for your keep, and enjoy wineries and great beaches nearby. The farm would even supply transportation from New York City and bicycles to get around once you arrive. All a friend and I had to do was take the subway to a farmer's market in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and a van would pick us up. The entire experience wouldn't cost a penny. I suspected it was all too good to be true.

Fall offers some of the best vegetable gardening. In fact, autumn's cool weather and Jack Frost's nippy touches can enhance the flavor of collards and other healthful greens. Spinach often survives winter, giving you a source of iron, vitamins, and beta-carotene through spring. Garlic is always best planted in September and October; planting a single clove yields a full head the next summer, according to Organic Gardening magazine. Mulch your garlic patch with straw to keep weeds down and soil moist.

and terms such as low flow and compact fluorescents are more common. "Eco-Home was the first in the country where a living, breathing human being began to retrofit an old home and open it up as a public demonstration for living differently. She was really the pioneer," said Lois Arkin, who in 1993 founded Eco-Village, a community in Los Angeles' Koreatown that's focused on living sustainably. "Julia ran herself out of existence, because a lot of the ideas she proposed have become commonplace," said Jane Collings, the senior editor of a series of oral histories that make up "Environmental Activism in Los Angeles" at the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - Earthworms may soon have their own Facebook fan page if some worm enthusiasts have their way. "I had forgotten how good food could taste fresh from the garden until I was experimenting with worm castings and started an organic garden," says Ron Crum of Williamsburg, Va. He now raises worms commercially for composting and for bait. In Yorktown, Va., master gardener Rebecca Cho is also into worms, on a much smaller scale for personal gardening needs. "The worms are the most carefree creatures I have ever tended to, only needing food every couple of weeks and fresh newspaper bedding," Cho says.

EMMAUS, Pa. - The rain had paused here sufficiently one day last week for Maria Rodale to sit on the stone wall where she'd played as a child; where the fountainhead farm of America's organic movement still brings forth a ration of breakfast eggs for her family, and the greenhouse yields spring sorrel, arugula, and early-ripening tomatoes called Fourth of Julys. She was taking a break from a board meeting of the nearby Lehigh County Hospital, the pieties of patient-centered care the topic du jour.

You've been making fun of Prince Charles for a long time now - the ears like open taxi doors, the fuddy-duddy mannerisms and marital missteps. But here's something you probably don't know about HRH Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales: For almost a quarter-century, he has been a prescient champion of organic gardening, a famous, if lonely, voice in a wilderness once considered the preserve of wackos and hippies. At long last, the gardener formally known as Prince is alone no more.

Somewhere in northern New Mexico is a quarry named for Rob Cardillo, who was on track for a successful career in paleontology after college. But for a twist here and a turn there, he might happily have ended up harvesting dinosaur bones for a living. Instead, he earns a comfortable keep stalking sleepy bees on lavender spikes at 6 in the morning and casing wildflowers at twilight to find just the right light and angle for a photograph. Life could be worse. Actually, for Cardillo, life couldn't be better.