Big box stores sell bat houses for backyards. They are with the birdhouses. I saw some at Lowes here in Florida not too long ago, and they have them listed online too. Jeep Good luck with going organic. I have gone mostly organic. Miracle grow for containers is pretty much it for chemicals. I use scrounged leaves for organic matter for the lawn and garden beds, and new this year, alfalfa pellets for lawn/shrub fertilizer (switched after three years of milorganite which was a replacement for years of chemical fertilizer). Going orgaqnic for the lawn has been the greatest. The lawn looks better each year. My success in the vegetable garden is hit or miss. Going organic has made little difference for me. Something does great every year, while other things don't. Weather, watering habits, plant location, etc. all have an affect, and I am learning bit by bit. Luckily I know where the grocery store is, so I garden for the experience, not survival. I hope that I can become a master organic gardener in time, but until then, I can be happy knowing that I am dong less damage to the environment while learning. Over the last four years, I have not bought and used 200 lbs of chemical fertilizer for the lawn! Yay! Think of the pallets and pallets of chemical fertilizer in the big box stores. ALL of it is going straight into the ground. Soon. As a matter of fact, every single chemical concoction on the garden center shelves in every big box store in this counrty will end up out of its packaging and into our environment this year. And then the shelves will be restocked to do it again. Everything you don't buy is something that will not have to be restocked. Having faith and taking a chance is hard to do. Nature works. I did a bunch of reading, got excited about the possibilities and did it. I get about the same results (slightly better) while buying almost nothing in the way of chemicals. I am very happy with the results of my going towards organic.

Pretty much every stoop in the city of Baltimore is made of marble. The old timers have been scrubbing down these marble stoops for 100 years with a product called bon ami. It looks like Ajax and comes in a similar container, but it is not abrasive (contains no pumice), it is organic (limestone powder, feldspar, coconut, soda ash, and baking soda). Works incredibly well. I use it on my marble stoop, polished marble tile, and everything porcelain in my house. $1 per can. Here is a link that might be useful: Product website and description This post was edited by klavier on Sun, Jan 6, 13 at 22:23

It depends on how dedicated you are to being organic. Do you want to be certified as an organic grower or just grow your own plants and veggies without chemical input? Or somewhere in between? There is commercial certified organic compost available if you look for it. The issues with persistent herbicides are often a bit overstated. These pesticides are highly regulated, not available to homeowners and typically are prohibited from any yard waste composting operations. If the compost includes materials from stables and feedlots, the risk increases as these herbicides are often used to keep weeds down in pasture lands and tainted material is consumed by the livestock and in turn is present in their manure. One way to be as organic as you can is to make your own compost. If you control what goes in, you can be assured what comes out :-)) This is what organic farmers do. And there are all manner of organic fertilizers that are free of any association with GMO's. I tend to be a little middle of the road on this topic. I use no synthetic/chemical based fertilizers and pesticides on anything growing in the ground. Organic fertilizers tend to not be all that efficient in a container growing situation, so I diverge slightly from hard and fast organics there. I have no issue with using non-certified compost as I don't believe there is enough of a concern about any residual contamination and persistent herbicides have been eliminated from commercial compost in my state. I also don't have an issue with using seeds that are not certified organic or purchasing starts with the same designation as it is my belief that how I grow them determines their true organic nature for me.

I really hope that a child's /grandchild's genes or DNA aren't affected by fast food...but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that it's possible. An organic seed vs. a non-organic seed might be no different genetically but the organic seed makes me feel like the plant came from a happy/pure place. If that is what you truly want then you may need to think about growing only organically-grown open-pollinated varieties and their seeds and not F1 hybrids. Or to use your analogy, the child of 2 parents is a result of the combination of their 2 DNAs - one embryo made up of 2 component DNAs. It matters not if that combination is natural or artificial. But a child of multiple parents where the embryo is created by manually fertilizing with the DNA of 3,4, 5 or more parents (as with most modern varieties) to produce the embryo (the seed) would not meet your criteria. And that is one of my primary concerns with the buy organic seed obsession so many seem to have. It gets carried to extremes. They do not understand how the hybrid variety seeds are created. I am NOT talking about the GMO stuff here so don't misunderstand that. There is no genetic modification of the natural DNA of those parents, simply a combination or a re-combination of them. So yes, when choosing seeds it does make a difference whether the seed is hybrid or open-pollinated. I'm all for supporting much of the organic gardening movement but to do so effectively one has to really understand the difference between the truth and the fictional hype associated with it. Failure to do that only encourages more of the marketing hype. Dave