Organic Gardening: planting the seeds of healthy eating AgeVenture News Service 02-04-08 "The majority of people eat vegetables every day" says master gardner, Lee O'Hara. "However", laments, O'Hara "we have no idea what chemicals they were grown in, what pesticides were used, who handled them, when were they harvested, and how many hundreds of miles were they shipped." O'Hara lives on a small hillside lot at the northeast edge of Los Angeles, between Glendale and Pasadena. Even though he lives in one of the best climates for gardening, but we do have our handicaps. Topsoil in Los Angeles is rare. It’s been scraped away for homes and buildings. We get virtually no rain from about mid-April through about mid-October or November. "In addition, we have “June Gloom” every year, starting about mid-May, and continuing sometime until the 1st or 2nd week in July. During much of that period, we’ll get 2-3 hours of afternoon sun, with the rest of the day being foggy and over-cast. Despite these drawbacks, O'Hara has spent the past 24 years turning his front and back yards into raised planting beds. Lee is pictured (photo) tendering to his organic garden. "At first" says Lee, "it was just with the intention of creating retaining walls, but soon escalated into growing vegetables organically." He now grows so much delicious produce in his yard that he can't eat it all, giving away about 85% of the juicy, delicious vegetables. "While I may be a world-class braggart, the point I want to make is that anyone can do it. If tomatoes don’t do well in your particular climate, vegetables that do well in your climate will do immensely better with the kind of gardening practices you’re starting to read about." Lee has since written and hosted a 55 minute DVD titled, "Organic Gardening Made Easy". The educational DVD is used by home gardeners and in educational institutions both in the United States and abroad. This instructional DVD offers easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions that will enable the gardening novice, as well as experienced gardeners, to immediately create and sustain their own organic home garden with minimal space needed. For example, twenty square feet of gardening space (a 4' x 5' bed) will produce 20-30 lbs of leaf lettuce over a 2-3 month period. Click here to view a short online video of Lee O'Hara's gardening tips.. If you like what you see in the online video, and you're determined to plant an organic garden of your own, "Organic Gardening Made Easy" can be purchased online at: www.organichomegardner.com AgeVenture News Service, 19432 Preserve Drive, Boca Raton, FL 33498 USA