Dear Customers of The Organic Gardener’s Pantry,Happy Holidays and All The Best for 2010! The New Year will bring a change at the helm of the Pantry. As of January 2010, you will be noticing a new voice on the phone and a new name at the bottom of the e-mails.

This is the time of year when I notice a lot of people buying their mycorrhizal fungi for planting and seeding, so I thought I’d just do a quick summary of some recent research that has shown that endomycorrhizal fungi (often referred to as arbuscular mycorrhizal, or AM fungi) take up more organic nitrogen from…

I have been drinking about 1 tablespoon of EM every day for over a year now, to keep my digestive system stocked up with all of these beneficial microbes. It’s a lot like eating yogurt and sauerkraut, but with a mixture of microbes that is absolutely optimal. I consider this habit to be part of…

EM (Effective Microorganisms) was originally formulated for agriculture, but it didn’t take long to figure out that it has an incredibly diverse array of uses. This is the first in a series of newsletters I will write on some of these alternative uses. And this first trial was not entirely successful…

Aerated compost tea is becoming more and more mainstream, as people catch on to the immense benefits of using tea that is brewed properly. Today I want to summarize an interesting trial that was done recently, using compost tea, kelp, humic acids, mycorrhizal fungi, and organic fertilizers. The main goals of the Harvard University project…

So, we already use blackstrap molasses as a food source when making compost teas and activating effective microorganisms. We also like to add additional molasses to our EM and water when we are applying the EM, to make sure the microbes are awake and ready to rock when they hit the soil and plants. It’s…

According to the book ‘Food Power from the Sea’, fish was used as a fertilizer in Europe as far back as the middle ages. The technology has changed – we now have liquid products that are easier to apply and more efficient – but the principles are the same. I get a lot of questions…

This is a strange one to most people, the idea of watering our plants with ocean water, also referred to as sea minerals or sea solids. The most common questions are:1. Isn’t it too salty?2. Isn’t the ocean polluted?3. Why should I pay for ocean water (this one comes especially from those on the coast)?

The suggested application rates for EM to soil and plants in our gardens vary widely. The 2 main manufacturers in North America suggest a rate of 1 gallon per 1000 sq ft per year, split into regular applications such as monthly, at a dilution rate of 1:1000, or as low as 1:100 for certain uses…