Current incarnation of Organic Gardening magazine

[cdntomato]

Well, it's been awhile since I've bothered to read 'OG'. I used to be a subscriber in the heady McGrath days. Plus I've been blessed with being at the right place at the right time (collection deselection at the local library) to purchase volumes of early OG.

Yesterday, I signed out a recent edition of OG with promises of tomato info. What a load of crap. (Excuse my English). Glad I never bother to actually buy the mag anymore. Wouldn't use it for toilet paper.

Now tell us how you really feel about the downward spiral of OG, Jennifer...

Jennifer, dismally looking for something offline that will provide the same sense of anticipation and enjoyment that the old Organic Gardening mag used to when it employed real gardeners and farmers who knew what they were talking about, knew who else knew what they were talking about and knew how to write about it properly and with a sense of humour.

[nctomatoman]

I agree - hard to remember the last time I've actually bothered to pick up and read a gardening magazine. I miss the old Gardens For All, which evolved into National Gardening.....what appears to me for these recent mags is that they have a schedule of what dumbed down stuff to report, and repeat it on a regular cycle (same thing happens in the gardening section of our newspaper....or snoozepaper!).

I think the other problem is that if you garden enough, we all gain so much wisdom that we tend to move beyond the basic information that the mags aim for.

[shelleybean]

I no longer subscribe to Organic Gardening or OG or whatever they call it now. My favorite was Kitchen Gardener. I loved that magazine. I guess it wasn't popular enough and they stopped printing it.

[gardenmama]

I loved Kitchen Gardener too! I have a stack of well thumbed through back issues on my nightstand. The only gardening mag I get now is Fine Gardening as an annual Xmas gift from my mother.

[redbrick]

The last several years (decade, maybe?) of Organic Gardening have been a serious disappointment to me as well. They rmind me of gerden themed movie trailers. Lots of visual fluff and teasers, but no meat.

If I could make a suggestion, Heirloom Gardener is the best current gardening mag that I've found out there. Baker Creek publishes it on a quarterly basis. Each issue carries thirteen articles covering heirloom vegetable varieties, antique fruit vareties, historical gardening methods and accounts, organic methods, and other historic themed topics.

[carolyn137]

The problem with Kitchen Gardener is that the editorial staff was changing the copy that authors sent in so much that they had a hard time getting decent stuff to publish b'c word like that goes out very quickly, especially to those who are GWAA ( garden writers association of America) members, thru website messenger sites for same.

In a nutshell they were almost impossible to work with and had huge turnover in staffing and four Editorial chiefs in two year which also led to problems since they handled the same person in different ways.

And I know full well what a mess Kitchen Gardener was b'c I was asked to write an article, they sent up a photo crew, set designer, and my editor was newly pulled from their woodworking magazine and knew nada about tomatoes.

The picture to text ratio at KG also got to be ridiculous.

My fave was National Gardening and I wrote for them and I respected all those folks there who were involved. If it weren't for the parent company, Foster and Gallagher, going bankrupt, they'd still be publishing. That same backruptsy wiped out Starks, Gurney's, Fields, and quite a few others until Gardens Alive rode their white charger into the midst and bought up all those companies for a song.

You might wonder where Gardens Alive got that kind of money. Come now, you've ALL seen what they offer and what they charge for it.

As for Organic Gardening, Craig and I were both very active when Mike McGrath was Editor and I was also invited to give a several day workshop on heirloom tomatoes at their growout area.

At that time it was obvious that money was hard to come by, income for OG was way down and that changes were in the air and it wasn't soon after that Maria, or whatever her name, took over from Mike and they changed the format of the magazine. Mike stayed around in some other capacity b'c he's married to a Rodale as I recall.

As soon as I saw what was happeing weith OG I never resubbed b'c I found the magazine to be of no interest whatsoever. Some of their staff escaped to Mother Earth News but I don't like that magazine either.

Finally, I initially subscribed to Baker Creeks magazine and did for a few years. Jere had asked me to write for them but I just couldn't do it b'c there were two others writing for them who were writing all sorts of nonesense, and more.

WWW was one, and the other was the guy who used to post at GW and took almost everything Craig and I said about histories of varieties, wrote it up, submitted it and it was published with no credits given at all. Not right.

There were articles I did like, but not that many and I haven' subbed to it for two years now so I don't know who is writing.

They really should have more editorial control over articles publised so that wrong info is not published. Just my opinion.

And I haven't found any other magazines to replace National Gardening, which in my opinion, was THE best.

[shelleybean]

I liked National Gardening, as well.

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare at Kitchen Gardener! i just liked it because it was dedicated to veggies, fruits, herbs and edible flowers. There wasn't much in that magazine that didn't interest me.

[jenn_sc]

I'm glad this thread appeared...I was considering a subscription to Organic Gardening. Our nephew sent us one of those "subscribe to a magazine and help our school!" deals and I was looking for something to buy. Now I know OG won't be it!!!

Speaking of crap magazines, I got a two year subscription to Better Homes and Gardens last year as a gift. I appreciate the gift, but the magazine is BAD. Not only is it FULL of ads (every other page, the whole mag) but the gardens are usually expensive, professionally done, and boring. Average people can't bring in "designers" to do all of the work, and who would want to? Not real gardeners, in my opinion!

Jennifer

[shelleybean]

Now that I have read this again, I didn't realize the company that printed Nat'l Gardening had gone bankrupt. I seem to remember getting a letter from them telling me they couldn't finish out my subscription because they were no longer going to print the magazine, however, there would be an on line version of the magazine. At the time, the idea of sitting at a computer and reading for long periods of time really turned me off, though I do it all the time now. I guess I just assumed that on line version would still be there if ever I wanted to go read it. I guess not.

[Allura]

Organic Gardening and National Gardening were great mags and full of valuable info when gardening first peeked my interest 15 years ago. OG was substantial and gave me something to read for a couple days whereas when they changed, it became nothing more than a "flyer". It broke my heart to see such a good mag reduced to just a few pages of nothing.

I subscribe to Garden Gate now, it's ok, but nothing like the other two. I'm glad I saved a box of old OG's from when they were still tops!

[Alberta]

When OG went all glitzy, I cancelled my subscription or let it run out, don't remember which now, but I just recently resubscribed to it and got an issue in the mail the other day, it does seem better than all the glitz and glitter they had a few years back.
Alberta

[wilderness1989]

Oh for the days when J.I. Rodale published the OG magazine. It was a size you could slip into the back pocket without folding. All the articles were informational, contained much more pertinent information on gardening. It's where Carla Emery put in a little classified ad promoting a cook/homesteading book and had not even written it yet. The good old days.....the '60's and the '70s.

[tjg911]

Jen,
.
You are correct about OG's heyday when Mike McGrath was the editor.

I have every issue from 1990 thru 1999, got them from library when they were ready to be thrown out for free or 10 cents a copy depending upon the library.

McGrath left around 1998 and the magazine just fell off a cliff, it was spectacular during his time as editor.

I now go to the library once a year and take out all the issues I have not seen yet. I thought the magazine was slightly improving a year ago, tho it was still crap! I like your use of that word cuz that is what it is - crap.
.
Tom

[the999bbq]

isn't the problem with (all) garden magazines that after a while they have educated you that much (and through other source as well of course) that you can't be bothered to read "the top ten tips for growing tomatoes" : number one : remove the succers, number two : you can help germination by tapping, number three : tomatoes love regular watering ...

[amideutch]

I remember seeing and old edition of OG in my book cabinet and had almost forgotten about. After reading this thread I decided to see what edition I had and what were its contents. It turned out to be VOL.33 NO.8 Aug 1986 and had an article called "So Long, Suckers". The topic was pruning and staking of tomatoes. It covered staking, weaving and caging of tomatoes. Here is an excerbt from the article.
" A trial from the University of Iowa showed that the indeterminate variety Jet Star gave the greatest early yield of fruit when plants were pruned to one stem, compared to two stems and unpruned. But determinate Pik-Red showed the highest yield on the unpruned bushes. At the end of the season the total yield of Jet Star was greatest on the unpruned bushes, by more than 2-to-1 over one-stem plants. Only the Pik-Red showed a difference in fruit size with significantly fewer large fruits on the one-stem plants."
This is the kind of stuff I miss in current gardening mags today. Tjg911 was right in that after Rodale/McGrath an era had ended, unfortunately for us gardeners. Ami