INVENTOR OF DR. EARTH A Conversation with . . . Milo Lou Shammas While most 7-year-old boys would do anything to get out of weeding their mother’s gardens and most 12-year-olds would never thinking of swapping shop class for botany, Milo Lou Shammas said the allure of plants and gardening has been with him forever. In his early teens, he was already developing his own fertilizer concoctions from the fish he ...

I tried to take a rare day off from my own self-conceived anti-chemical rat race this past Saturday. I tuned into the results of the Beach to Beacon road race, which attracts elite runners from around the world to Cape Elizabeth, Maine. These competitors all land here at the behest of Joan Benoit Samuelson, the Maine native who hosts the event. At the end of this year's race, the other organizers staged a m ...

It's been almost exactly a year since a Center for Public Integrity report revealed that pyrethrins and pyrethroids were responsible for more than 26,000 human poisonings — making these compounds responsible for 26 percent of all major and moderate human incidents involving pesticides in the United States in 2007. In the past two weeks, reports coming out of the University of California Berkeley have caused ...

As I head out of town with my family today, I wanted to share article by a Facebook friend, Trish Riley: http://www.gogreennation.org/2009/07/the-writing-is-on-the-wall-chemical-contamination-is-dangerous/ ...

This is slightly off the lawn topic, since slugs are not a major pest of turfgrass. Given the spring and summer we've had in the Northeast, though, the subject of what to do about slugs comes up just about every day. So what do you do? Here are a few ideas: With excess moisture slugs can appear in a moment’s notice. The absolute worst thing you can do is head to the garden center for commercially available ...

A new report released yesterday called on homeowners around the Chesapeake Bay to understand the consequences of common household pesticides and to reduce their use of the toxic substances. Here is the text of the release: Pesticides: The Unaddressed Bay Polluter Government and Public Urged to Tackle Chemical Threat For release Thursday July 30, 2009 Baltimore MD, 07/30/2009 – Unaddressed pesticide pollutio ...

I'm a big fan of Wendy (or Gwendolyn) Bounds from the Wall Street Journal. I met her in July of 2007 during my first appearance on Good Morning America and we've kept in touch in the years since then. She's a huge advocate of trying anything organic in her yard. Given the fact that she's: a) from the Wall Street Journal and b) tall, blonde and beautiful, she gives those of us on the organic fringes a compel ...

Climate variances never cease to amaze me. As I sit here in soggy Maine with vernal pools that have usually evaporated by May still in evidence as we approach August, I also see on the news that Texas and parts of the nation are experiencing the worst drought in history. Three years ago I was in Texas to film organic lawn care segments for HGTV. One of our guests was Michael Bosco, an organic lawn care prof ...

I always bristle when people claim I'm anti-lawn. That couldn't be further from the truth. I love lawns; throwing the ball with my teenage son, among my favorite pastimes, wouldn't be the same without grass to play on. In some situations, though, lawns just don't belong . . . in Las Vegas for example. The region only gets about 4 inches of rain a year and the local lake is draining at a record pace. Here's ...

I want to do a shout-out to a good friend from Connecticut, Scott Reil. He's a green industry veteran who has long been bucking stubborn colleagues when it comes to all things organic and sustainable. Scott has been answering gardeners' questions at http://www.helpfulgardener.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15611 since before I knew the word blog existed. I just discovered that he gave our movie a good plug back ...