Urban Garden Solutions Sponsor Profile

I’d like to introduce Urban Gardening Solutions as a new sponsor of Urban Organic Gardener. I spoke with one of the founders and co-owners Rachael Ross to learn more about her company. Here’s the Q&A.

What does your company specialize in?
Innovative and earth-friendly products for the small-space edibles gardener.

What are your best selling products?
It really depends on time of year. Right now they are raised garden beds and grow lights and plant stands.

What does organic gardening mean to you?
We feel that organic gardening and sustainability really go hand in hand. Let’s face it. At this point, our planet is no longer pure. We have pollutants in our air, soil and water supply. There are some things we can do to mitigate how those pollutants affect life on Earth and some things we have no control over.

However, moving forward we can make choices in how we live, including how we grow our food, that doesn’t perpetuate the damage.

Instead of applying that chemical pesticide, how about creating a habitat for beneficial insects to rid your plants of the harmful ones?

Instead of dousing your veggie plants with a synthetic fertilizer, opt for pouring compost tea on them.

What organic gardening really means to us is understanding our natural world and the delicate balance of all living things and then working within that structure. By making these types of choices, we achieve a certain level of sustainability as well.

Which of your products do you think is a must have and why.
Any composter a household can accommodate. There are a 101 ways to grow food, but the one thing you always need is organic nutrients. Composting is one of the best ways to participate in living a more sustainable lifestyle. If everyone would recycle their organic waste into nutrients to grow their own food plants, not only does it keep this methane-producing waste out of the landfills, but also makes much better use of our available resources.

What’s the one piece of advice that you wish someone gave you when you first started to grow your own?
I wish I’d known that gardening doesn’t just consist of robotically following steps in your gardening book, but also possesses an element of art. There are a lot of variables in the mix when growing a plant – location, amount of light, soil quality, water quality, temperature, etc. There’s no one data repository that can tell everyone, everywhere how to successfully garden.

So start small and pay attention. Learn how best to garden in your specific environment and grow the size and number of varieties over time. Don’t get discouraged – Successful gardening is a learning process.

Be sure to follow Urban Garden Solutions on their blog, Facebook and Twitter.

Find out more about becoming an Urban Organic Gardener sponsor.