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It’s amazing how Mother Earth can provide many of the foods we eat – including healthy vegetables. UT researchers are studying how best to grow these crops, and part of that work involves organic farming.

Home Wine Turbine

James Copper


Wines are available in a number of different types and organic wines are one type that is getting more and more attention these days. Organic wines are processed from grapes which are grown without the use of synthetic fungicides or fertilizers. In vineyards where biodiversity is encouraged, vines are grown with the help of living soil i.e. soil full of worms and bacteria which helps to draw the maximum level of minerals from soil. The wines which are grown in living soil have good resistance to disease. Biodiversity also creates an eye catching landscape.

Grape growing is organic by origin but not all vineyards are organic. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in charge of regulations for organic food products. USDA defines organic food as ‘the food which is produced by farmers with the help of renewable resources and by conversion of water and soil which enhances the quality of environment for future generations’. Organic farming is done without the use of harmful pesticides or fertilizers or any ionizing radiation. Before declaring the farm as organic the government inspects the farmland and checks that the farmer rules of to meet the standards set by United States Department of Agriculture.

The Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) did not give permission for wines to be designated as organic. This decision of ATF was challenged by Hallcrest Vineyards. Since then few of the wineries have become certified processors of organic wines.

Organic wines are of four types:

? 100% organic: Produced with 100%organically grown grapes and contain no added sulphites.

? Made with organic ingredients: They have at least 70% of organically grown grapes and may contain sulfite.

? Organic: They contain at least 95% of ingredients from certified sources.

? Some organic ingredients: Thus, before buying organic wine one must know the difference between the four categories of organic wine.

The wine which is processed from organically grown grapes and which also gives information about its certifying agency is labelled as organic and is sealed by United States Department of Agriculture as ‘organic wine’. Such wine does not contain any added sulfites but can consist of natural sulphites which must be less than 20 parts a million. Sulfite is a preservative of wine which is commonly known as sulphur dioxide. Sulfite has antioxidant properties and also some antimicrobial properties. It is a controversial topic whether it is possible that wine could be sulfite free. The producers of organic wine have to undergo various inspections by the organisations to get the organic certification.

Reconversion is the process by which conventional vineyards are converted to fully organic vineyards. The whole process takes up to 3 years to complete. The use of non organic treatment is strictly prohibited in the organic vineyards. As per law all the organic claims of wine are to be mentioned on the label so that one can read the label and can come to know about the contents of the bottle. Organic wines are a gem of ecosystem. Organic wines do not contain any harmful ingredients as the conventional wines.



Lorrie

Abhishek Agarwal


People who have tasted organically grown vegetables swear by its taste and find it extremely difficult to revert back to old eating habits. They often comment that one can taste the sweetness of the sun in the organically produced vegetables. So if it is the first batch of peppers during summers, the juice filled tomatoes, the first lettuce of the spring season or the pumpkins and squashes reaped in the season of autumn, the vegetables never tasted as better as they do when organically produced.

There are several other facts besides pleasing taste buds that justify the gradual movement of today’s society towards organically grown vegetables. Reliable scientific data testifies to the ill effects of fertilizers and chemical pesticides used in the orthodox cultivation methods. There is a clearly defined connection between diseases like cancer, neurological damages, hormonal imbalances and the chemicals that are used in non-organic cultivation. Organic vegetable farming is the need of the hour if we want to protect our children from the disastrous consequences of chemically produced vegetables. We all are aware that kids due to their lower tolerance levels are much more vulnerable to chemical residues as compared to adults.

Following are some important points that you must keep in mind during a transition to organic farming. These points will help you in maintaining the correct natural balance among the plants, animals, soil and the insects:

1. You must stop using all kinds of herbicides, synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. These chemicals do a lot of harm to human bodies in the long run.

2. You must develop the habit of not throwing the kitchen scraps into the garbage box. Instead, start turning that scrap into organically rich nutrient for your garden by making compost heaps.

3. Don’t go about killing the caterpillars and bugs in your garden. A lot of them actually help you in protecting your vegetable garden. There are books you can refer to obtain more knowledge about such good pests and bugs.

To get along successfully with the organic farming, you will have to learn to stop compacting your garden soil. Compacting normally done to get rid of the air gaps in soil bed. You must rather develop the habit of making pathways between the rows of planted crops, thus enabling you to reach and tend to each plant with ease. It is recommended to till the soil only once each in the season of spring and the fall.

Organic farming and water sprinklers don’t go together. The water sprinklers deliver water too fast for the soil to absorb effectively. Hence, it is a good idea to rather use a hose and use it slowly to wet the soil bed comprehensively. You can also try rotating the locations of crop cultivation year on year. This helps in effectively preventing pests and crop diseases.

In the organic method of vegetable cultivation, you will need to keep the garden bed regularly covered in organic mulch like grass clippings, straws or the chopped leaves. Such regularity will curb the weed growth and help the ground absorb water more effectively. This is one of the best methods to achieve optimum results for the organic vegetable garden.



John

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Dreaming of a small garden on the patch behind your house? Also, you want to start eating organic and make a small difference to this environment?

Here’s some help on putting together plants and their names to make things easy.

Now, if you go to a nursery and ask to buy a daylily, the grower will point out that there are many kinds of daylily. Do you want one that’s yellow, red, orange, or multicolored? If you say “yellow,” she may point out that she carries Stella d’Oro, Hyperion, or several others. It all comes down to the variety name, called the cultivar by horticultural professionals. Cultivar is a contraction of “cultivated variety” and is the name of the particular plant.

Naturally occurring wild plants are named by their genus and their species: The naturally occurring form of broccoli is Brassica oleracea, with Brassica being the genus and oleracea the species. There are many different kinds of wild brassicas. Each kind is given a species name (in other words, a specific name) to differentiate it from others in its genus.

Over the years, growers and horticulturists have selected especially delicious or prolific strains of Brassica oleracea that come true to seed—meaning that if their seed is planted, it will produce the same strain as its parent. These are called open-pollinated varieties. Among types of broccoli, De Cicco, Italian Green Sprouting, and Umpqua are such open-pollinated varieties, and you might find them listed in catalogs like this: Brassica oleracea ‘De Cicco’. “Heirloom varieties” are open-pollinated forms of crops that have been passed down through generations of home gardeners because of their high quality.

Horticulturists and plant breeders will often cross one open-pollinated variety with another to combine desired characteristics, producing hybrids, also known as crosses. These can be patented. If you plant hybrid seeds, you’ll get the hybrid that the breeders intend. But if you let the hybrid plants go to seed and then plant those seeds, the subsequent generation will revert to a fairly random genetic mixture of the parents’ characteristics, rather than more of the hybrids. Among broccoli, popular hybrids include Green Comet, Packman, and Premium Crop. Horticulturists use the symbol × (a cross) to denote a hybrid, so you might see a seed catalog with the following listing: Brassica × ‘Packman’. Usually, however, seed catalogs forego all the botanical details and simply list plants by their cultivar names.

An easy way to think of these distinctions is to visualize a slot machine where the little windows with lemons and cherries and liberty bells represent a set of genes. Pulling the handle is like planting the seed. Wild plants will almost always produce the same pictures in the windows every time you pull the handle. So will open-pollinated varieties. Hybrids will produce the desired lineup of pictures only on the first pull of the handle. A second pull (equivalent to planting seed produced by a hybrid plant) will scramble the pictures, and you won’t be able to say exactly what you’ll get.

Now that you are familiar with names of different plants, you can also use your fruits of labor to make some yummy organic recipes!



Tom