Now is the perfect time of year to show your kids where the food on their table comes from. Fall fairs in Southern Ontario are fun, hands-on ways for kids to learn that the milk in their cereal comes from cows, their eggs come from chickens, and their apples come from trees.

Fall fairs feature livestock shows, petting paddocks, pig and chicken races, horse pulling competitions, and pie eating contests. Is there any better way to spend a gorgeous fall Saturday? For dates and locations go to www.harvestontario.com and look up Fall Fairs.

And fall just wouldn’t be fall without an afternoon of apple picking. One of the best and most family-friendly apple picking farms is Chudleigh’s in Milton, Ontario: www.chudleighs.com

For more grown up autumn pleasures, take a lovely fall colours drive through Niagara’s wine region. Check out www.winesofontario.org

Like everything in your garden, great grass starts with great soil. Toronto soil is clay based which means the lime content is high. The problem is that lime makes soil acidic, but grass likes it neutral, so getting that great, lush green lawn takes a little work.

Organic gardening is often about balance: what will give us what we need without upsetting the natural chemical balance.

LPGC has been testing and studying the organic choices for a couple of years now. One of our best new lawn fertilizers, K-Mag, uses magnesium and sulphur to reduce the acidity from the soil, bringing it to a more neutral state.

The results we’re seeing are impressive; this is both a gentle and very effective way to improve the foundation for your lawn. It’s an ideal final fertilizer for the year.
Another exciting new product is our Easy Flow compost pellets. When we seed lawns we used to put a layer of peat moss on top, but the benefits were limited. Our new compost pellets are made from leaves and other plant based materials.

Layered over your lawn after seeding and aeration, they absorb water and expand to provide excellent, slow release nutrition to roots and plants over a longer period.

If you want proof of human being’s persistent, unrelenting creativity, just look at the range of fantastic new organic garden products that have leapt into the market in the last few years. We love these products not just because they’re getting the job done, but for the clever ways they go about it.

Take neem oil for example: this amazing pesticide is taken from the seeds of the Neem tree and is so benign that it’s one of the ingredients in South Asian and European toothpaste.

Neem seeds are rich in fatty acids and have a long history of use as medicinals. They’re anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial just for starters. On the downside, the oil is a tad stinky, but it’s a very small price to pay for a powerful natural pesticide like this one.

Neem oil’s strategy for pest control makes it a ‘systemic insecticide’: it intervenes at several stages of the insect’s life to prevent reproduction, block the development of eggs and larvae, and deter feeding.

Add to this the fact that neem oil targets just exactly the insects you want it to (sap sucking and chewing) and leaves the beneficial bugs alone, and you’ve got a great new garden tool—with no negative side effects.