Step into a garden center or hardware store, and it's likely you'll see "green," "organic" and "eco-friendly" slapped on myriad products.

Organic gardening has hit prime time; it is no longer solely the domain of hemp-clad hippies living in multicolored buses.

And it is not just vegetables; every facet of yard maintenance -- soil conditioning, weed and pest control and lawn care -- now can be done using organic products. This is nothing new. Legions of gardeners have been doing this for years.

But with "going green" in vogue, many more of us are giving it a try.

A spring survey by the Garden Writers Association Foundation found 35 percent of consumers are more inclined to buy organic plant food and fertilizers, while one in three will give organic pest control products a try.

The market has responded in kind. You can find thousands of products labeled organic from big names such as Scotts Miracle-Gro Products Inc., Sun Guard Chemical Co. Inc. and Bayer CropScience offering everything from amino acids to worm castings.

Helping push this are food safety scares, such as E. coli-contaminated spinach, and government warnings of how once-common pesticides, such as diazinon, are linked to acute health problems.

John and Sandy Venman have been riding the organic, chemical-free bandwagon all their lives. And they are glad to see more of us climbing aboard.

The Venmans, who run Venman Landscape Services in Rockford, stand by natural, nontoxic biological fertilizers and minerals for lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetable gardens and indoor plants.

"Nature provides everything you need; you don't have to use man-made chemicals," John Venman said. "Some popular chemicals used for years are now banned."

Reducing our dependence on fertilizers and pesticides is as easy as building healthy soil, Venman says, a philosophy echoed by horticultural professor Jeff Gillman, author of the 2008 book "The Truth About Organic Gardening: Benefits, Drawbacks and the Bottom Line."

"How do you do that? You build the soil with correct amounts of compost and mulch, choose plants that do well and place them in their optimum locations," Gillman said recently.

"These are the true parts of organic gardening."

Even if a product or practice is called organic, don't assume it is automatically safe for humans and beneficial to the environment, Gillman said. Insufficiently composted animal waste can be a source of harmful E. coli contamination, he said.

Full Story: http://www.mlive.com/homeandgarden/index.ssf/
2008/05/more_gardeners_give_organic_pr.html