Syndicated eco-columnist and Master Gardener Annie Spiegelman (AKA “The Dirt Diva”) offers practical tips on organic gardening, composting and planting along with guidance and gripes on marriage, motherhood and “having it all.” A cynically optimistic horticulturist, Spiegelman offers positive reinforcement and moral support as a gardener who’s made all the mistakes, and has lived to tell how to make peace with snails, fungi, bacteria (and your boyfriend). Civil Eats caught up with the Dirt Diva to dish about her new book, Talking Dirt: The Dirt Diva’s Down-to-Earth Guide to Organic Gardening.

CIVIL EATS: You’re a master gardener, garden columnist and gardening author. Is it true you started out in the movie business in Manhattan as a production assistant on the movie Staying Alive?

ANNIE SPIEGELMAN: Yes and I’m proud to say that I was hired as a “parking” PA. I watched parking spaces all day and night while Sylvester Stallone was directing.  I was so good at it that I got hired on my next movie, Moscow on the Hudson, with Robin Williams. I was hired as “assistant to the Craft Service person.” Basically I was the low man on the totem pole. I was the garbage girl. Now I work as a First Assistant Director in film production and write gardening books. I spend my days dodging bullets from the maniacal movie industry and the demanding publishing world, and I rarely take medication.

CE: Why this book on organic gardening?

AS: It’s different than other gardening books because I was a really bad gardener and then I slowly evolved into a very good gardener. I was raised and hardened in New York City and thought that flowers simply came from the flower shop on 86^th and Lexington. When I moved to California in my 20s I was introduced to my first garden. I watered the weeds thinking they were flowers and polluted the entire zip code with chemical fertilizer and pesticides until the soil had not one nutrient left in it. It wasn’t soil anymore. Soil is alive. It was dirt. Dirt is dead. Nothing grows in dirt. Since I became a Master Gardener and got rid of the old garden chemicals sitting in my shed, I fertilize with compost religiously. I now have healthy, happy soil. If I can do this, trust me, anyone can.

CE: What is the one thing you hope readers will appreciate about organic gardening after reading the book?

AS: That gardening with chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides is old school. That should have gone out with Beatle-bangs and B&W TV’s with aluminum foil on the antenna. Some pesticides have saved us throughout history but now it’s overkill. Since we’ve been marketed to death for the last 50 years, farmers and homeowners are now hooked on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides instead of learning the basics about soil; just one tablespoon of soil can contain up to 10 billion microbes—that’s one and a half times the human population. These microorganisms breakdown organic material for us for free and feed our plants (for free!). Many chemical fertilizers and pesticides destroy the life in the soil. They pollute and deplete the land without giving anything back to Mother Earth. Organic gardening is working with Mother Nature, not against her. We take and we give back. Organic gardening is about creating a safe, healthy, long term and symbiotic relationship with the land. Not hit and run, or a one-night stand.

CE: What about your book will surprise your readers?

AS: That American agriculture uses 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides annually; that’s about 4 pounds per every man, woman and child. Here in the Bay Area, where we’re supposedly a bunch of iPhone-toting treehuggers, every single creek is contaminated with high levels of pesticides, especially Diazinon, a pesticide that was banned for home use almost 10 years ago because of its toxicity to mammals. If our waterways in California are so polluted, it’s frightening to think what’s in the water in other states where environmental laws aren’t as stringent. Enough with the chemicals before we all end up in the wacky shack! Mostly, I want to do this for my son. If we don’t clean up our act environmentally, the next generation will think their parents were so lame.

CE: Why aren’t you a fan of the lawn?

AS: As my soil scientist pal, Professor Stephen Andrews at UC Berkeley, says, “If you’re growing a lawn in California, God help you!” We have no water to waste on lawns in California. The water department’s new slogan is “Brown is the new green.” They’re asking homeowners to stop watering their lawns in the summer. (I promise they will come back to life with the winter rains.) Not only are lawns a pollinator’s (birds, honeybees, beneficial insects) desert, but they’re also giant pesticide guzzlers. They consume 90 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides annually. For a piece of turf! In the 1940s, the government asked its citizens to grow victory gardens to help feed the country. There were 250 victory garden plots in Golden Gate Park alone. Then came the 1950s; suburbia, gigantic front and back lawns, DDT spray trucks, chemical fertilizer dependence and the beginning of fast food restaurants. I took out my front lawn a few years ago. I planted natives and drought tolerant plants and I’ve never been happier. For more on organic lawn care or to get rid of your cranky, rusty lawn, visit: http://www.safelawns.org and http://www.lawnreform.org.

CE: Any tips for novice homeowners growing organic vegetables this spring?

AS: Wherever you live, before planting vegetables or fruit, find an area that receives 6-8 hours of sun. (Leafy vegetables can be happy with less sunlight, 4-6 hours.) If this is a new plot of soil that has never been amended, you might want to do a soil test first. This will tell you the pH of your soil. Most vegetables grow best in a ph of 6-7, which is a bit on the acidic side. You can find a simple soil test kit at your local plant nursery. Your new mantra should be “compost, compost, compost.” Compost will slowly feed your plants and retain water as well. A thin layer of mulch (leaves, straw) on top of that will keep your crops warm in the early spring and cool in the summer. If you’re not using compost in your yard, I’d rather you don’t garden at all. Try knitting or namedropping instead. Plant some herbs and flowers such as nasturtium, Shasta daisy and yarrow, nearby your food. This will help to invite beneficial bugs to eat up any pests that come to visit your crops. Be prepared to be a doting parent. Growing vegetables requires patience and attention. Keep an eye out for pests and make sure you’re watering consistently. Using drip irrigation is best. If all else fails, go support your local organic farmer at the farmers’ market who works to hard 24/7 to grow healthy, safe food for you and your family.

CE: What’s your organic gardening dream?

AS: To see compost bins in every backyard and in every community, instead of overfilled landfills spewing out methane like it’s going out of business. There’s always a wild garden party going on in a compost pile. And, to get those kids off of screens and outside learning how to grow their own food and flowers. I want to help create organic school gardens in every school in America!

In neighborhoods around the globe people gather on their front porches to commune, but our busy street, while friendly, is not like that. Yet a landscape change Blue and I made for environmental reasons brought us unexpectedly closer to our own community.

A few summers ago we took out our front lawn, and by removing the weed and gopher-ridden turf and disabling the sprinkler system, we started saving 18,000 gallons of water a year. We put in a drip system whose sprinkler heads consumed a couple of gallons per watering, versus the hundreds per watering of conventional sprinklers.

We replaced the lawn with vegetable beds that soaked up the sun bathing the front of our house. My brother-in-law Eamon built an arbor over the picket fence, and we planted kiwi and grape vines to grow up over the arbor and provide a covering, thereby discouraging passers-by on our busy street from picking the vegetables. The vines would take a few years to form a covering, though, and in that time we never lost so much as a tomato.

Our son Eliot (whose placement somewhere on the autistic spectrum made him act younger than his ten years) helped me plant tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, and blueberries in the new beds. He watered the seedlings and helped me release a can of ladybugs on their leaves in the evening. I told him the ladybugs stay overnight and lay their eggs on the plants, which propagate new ladybugs to eat the “bad bugs” eating the seedlings. Eliot was fascinated with insects, partly based on fear and his ability to take the minute and make it larger. He spent a lot of time in the garden scouting the insects and watching his beloved bees gather pollen in the flowers, which he called “rosenflowers.”

But the best part about our new garden was that it got us out in front of the house with our neighbors. The evening we released the ladybugs, our neighbor Grandfather Tea walked by. His granddaughter was a quiet, bright girl whom our daughter Carly had known since kindergarten, and with whom she had become closer friends in middle school. While her parents worked full time in a Chinese restaurant, Carly’s friend lived with her grandparents just around the corner from us, but it wasn’t until Grandfather Tea walked by the front yard where I was picking vegetables that he and I had our first conversation.

One afternoon that summer I started digging out the weeds pushing through the cracks in the sidewalk in front of our house. It was painstaking work bending over a flathead shovel in the heat, scraping at the concrete. When work with the flathead shovel produced little more than lower back issues, I got down on my knees with a tool and dug at the roots deep in the cracks.

It was when I was on my knees that I spoke for the first time with two different people who had been walking by my house every day for years. One was a neighbor who lived with his mother, but hung out on the streets and talked to himself as he passed my house. We’d never said more than hello. But the day I was on my knees digging at the cracks in the sidewalk, he passed by and said, “That’s hard work. I know, I’ve done it.”

I stood and saw the neighbor who often sat on the curb where I was now raking up weeds and dirt. He hand-rolled cigarettes and stared at the figures that raced across his vision, and for which he was heavily medicated. Most days he was lost in a fog, but when he was lucid he was always friendly. The day I raked my weeds, he looked up and waved.

I got down on my knees again to dig deeper in the cracks, and the man who always wore a helmet walked by. I imagine he wore the helmet for medical reasons to protect his head from falls. We had never spoken, although we’d said hello. This time he bent down until his eyes were level with mine, and we talked for a moment about the weeding. Before he stood to go, he patted me on the shoulder and said. “Keep up the good work.”

Two of the neighbors with whom I exchanged greetings that day had lives that revolved around the street, and by being in the street myself I was blessed by their presence. Christians are taught to find the holy in unexpected places, and certainly that day I did.

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Growing up in suburban Oklahoma in the 1980s, I was three generations away from my farming ancestors but ate more prepackaged food than greens. Having spent the last decade improving my diet, I can now say I am ready to try my hand at growing some of my own food – on my rooftop in Manhattan.

Beginning this spring, I am planning to install (with the help of great neighbors and garden-savvy friends) a roof garden with raised beds for growing crops. I will record my experience on Civil Eats, in a series titled “Roof Garden Rookies,” because I am literally starting out green. I hope that this series breaks down the process into easy to swallow bites, and that readers feel empowered to try to grow some of their own food too.

Aside from the word from my garden-savvy friends, books have helped me start to get my head around this exciting but scary task:

• Eliot Coleman – The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener
• R. J. Ruppenthal – Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting
• Tanya L. K. Denckla – The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food
• Linda Yang – The City Gardener’s Handbook: From Balcony to Backyard

The first step before we get started was to have an engineer establish how much weight our rooftop can handle.  We are lucky to have recently rebuilt our rooftop, including new joists.  However, to stay on the safe side, our raised beds must be filled with special lighter-weight soil and must be easily drained to maintain 60 pounds per square inch or less (this includes wintertime with a layer of snow on top).

My next step was to begin to plan what I’d like to grow.  To begin, its good to take note of your hardiness zone.  According to the National Gardening Association, New York City is in zone 6B, but because we are container and raised bed gardening on a rooftop, I have been advised to go to the next zone, 6A, with an average minimum temperature of between -5 and -10 degrees F.  It also doesn’t hurt to take a look at The Farmer’s Almanac, which gives advice on when to get your seedlings planted, so you can then plan either the growing of the seedlings in seed starting trays or when and where to acquire them.  I’m going to try to start most of my seedlings myself, which means I need to get started!  The Almanac is suggesting that I get seedlings in the ground for many of the the crops I want to grow by late March – early April.  As for what I’d like to grow, I first came up with a list of things I like to eat.  From that list, I’m going to try my hand at tomatoes, a few different lettuces, herbs, chard, carrots, beets, squash, celery root, cauliflower, bush beans, kale and maybe blueberries.  I will be placing my seed order this week, and then soon, starting my seeds inside my apartment.

Upcoming, the series will discuss tools and seed starting, building raised beds, preparing the soil, designing a roof garden structure, maintenance, and will break down the mistakes and (hopefully) successes, so that next year’s version is even better.  Keep an eye out, and I’m looking forward to your suggestions, comments and questions.

Photo: A blank slate – our roof at present.

If only we had a commander-in-chief who called on us to grow our own crops, instead of to shop! It sounds implausible now, but there was a time when our government actually encouraged us to get off our cans and get canning. The current administration is famously reluctant to encourage preserving of any kind, be it sweet or savory.

A couple of generations ago, our government championed home food gardening as a civic duty, a way for average Americans to help ease the food shortages we suffered during World War II. And the campaign worked; in 1943, we managed to grow 40 percent of the vegetables we ate in the U.S.

Our nation’s last energy crisis drove us into the dirt, too; in 1975, “49 percent of U.S. households were growing vegetables,” as Bruce Butterfield, the National Gardening Association’s market research director, told the Washington Post recently.

So as our current war drags on and gas prices rise, it’s no surprise that Americans are once again flocking to their local garden centers, snapping up seedlings, and supplanting Bermuda grass with Bermuda onions. But this time, we’re doing it without the inducement of any pro-produce propaganda from the White House. The folks at the helm of our sinking economy are too busy backing the lenders to rally the back-to-the-landers.

The call to tear out your turf and grow turnips comes, instead, from humble homegrown heroes like Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International and the creative force–and face–of the Eat The View campaign to launch a new generation of Victory Gardens, starting with the White House lawn (see Roger’s latest YouTube opus, This Lawn is Your Lawn, at the top of this post.)

Alice Waters famously tried to persuade President Clinton to install a kitchen garden and compost pile on the White House grounds. If only she had succeeded–the Clinton legacy might be burnished with black gold instead of tarnished by dirt. But Waters, undaunted, continues to spearhead–along with Doiron and a small army of trowel-wielding terroirists –a visionary agrarian platform I call YIMBY-ism; the Yes, In My Back Yard! movement. Waters has helped created a stellar example in her own backyard by marshalling the forces that recently transformed the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall into the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden. It’s a blueprint for greener grounds all around us, and a recipe for true energy independence. Calories, after all, are just another unit of energy. Grow your own, and you’re on the road to self-sufficiency. The Path to Freedom lies through the garden. So let’s get this presidential campaign out of the gutter and into the dirt!