A funny thought occurred to me midway through the organic gardening workshop I took last week up at Esalen: In recent years, we’ve turned a lot of chefs into celebrities or even, really, rock stars. And yet the gardeners and farmers – who are so important in providing the actual materials for that food – remain anonymous. I think that's too bad because, let's face it, I don’t care how good a chef you are, you can’t make a good caprese without a great tomato.

So, here’s to the rock-star gardeners, three of whom  -- Amigo Bob Cantisano, Shirley Ward and Wendy Johnson (pictured, from left to right) – led our workshop. All three are passionate and knowledgeable but also offer their own unique perspective when it comes to gardening, with Amigo providing the science, Wendy the art and Shirley the intuitive. The information they provided was amazing (if, at times, a little overwhelming) and could (and has) filled books. After awhile, though, some patterns emerged and I was able to coalesce at least some of the information into four categories that provide a good place for newbie gardeners to start (click "read more"):

1. Soil. Organic gardeners will tell you that they don’t grow plants they grow soil. And the most important component to that soil is rich organic material and one of the best ways to achieve that is with compost. Compost compost compost. It’s the building block of good soil. If you don’t have the space to make your own compost pile – which, when we made one at Esalen reminded me of making a big (and I mean BIG) ole lasagna -- you can buy it. To make sure it’s good, here’s a test you can use: put a little of the compost into a spoon and then pour hydrogen peroxide over it. If it reacts by bubbling up FURIOUSLY (furiously being the operative word -- even poor compost will bubble a bit) then it’s good compost. Amigo also suggests using your eyes and ears: "Good compost should smell like the forest after a spring rain and your eyes should be see crumbly, soil-like qualities that are dark brown, not black."

Like I said, this is just a small sample of the kind of information learned at the workshop and everybody's garden is different and has different needs. As Wendy said (quoting one of her teachers), when it comes to gardening "in general, everything is specific."

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