CYBERSPACE REPORT # 11  - APRIL 2, 1998

Bill Weber  - WEB Site
> http://www.geocities.com/~billweber/ <
                 TIME TO PLANT
          Pussy willows, crocuses, wild geese,
warm southern breezes, thunder & lightning
all remind us that another spring is arriving.

In this never ending cycle of life,
THERE IS A TIME TO PLANT AND A TIME TO REAP.

For those of us living in Wisconsin, the next couple of months is the main season for plantings.  Some of you reading this may be big time planters,  acres and acres of grain, corn, alfalfa, fruits and vegetables.  You can find almost any topic in the field of agriculture that you wish to know about by just clicking on your favorite search engine typing  - agriculture - and step back as the screen fills with thousands of sites.  If you don't want to spend a lot of time reviewing all those sites you can specify a particular area of interest to you like "dairy farming" or cranberry production" etc.

        In getting information for this article I ran across a WEB site by an Australian company RINEX, that is advising farmers in that country (Australia) about  Precision Farming ,  a quote from their WEB page: "Agriculture is about to enter a brave, new space-age world, so new and different it exhilarates some and scares others."  Taken from John Deere article "Zeroing in on Precision Farming" Whether this will be a  space age tool for the coming generations or only a fad, only time will tell but it is a new approach of using computer technology and space mapping to raise more abundant crops at lower cost and less air and water pollution. For some interesting reading: Go to
> http://www.rinex.com.au/precise.shtml <

        Then there are those of us who have our smaller home gardens. Using our gardens as the source of most of our food supply for the next year or there are those who only raise what is fresh and usable for the coming growing season.    An interesting WEB site is  Virtual Gardener at   > http://www.gardenmag.com/ <  click on the vegetables section if you are thinking of raising your yearly food supply.  There are many helpful suggestions. It is somewhat limited but covers the basics pretty well.           But who among us has not envied the beauty of the flower and landscape gardeners. Again in all of this there are many, many WEB sites that one can access.  This one I found to have a lot of information on all aspects of gardening but largely deals with flowers and landscaping. It is called Gardening Tips - and it loads fairly quickly. > http://homeandfamily.com/gard.html <

        Or maybe your cup of tea is "Herbs"  a kind of fun WEB page on this subject is World of Herbs, a fast loading WEB site with many links to other sources such as organic gardening etc.  Go to: >http://pages.prodigy.com/FL/Tampa/lemon/hercoi.htm  <

        I for one am a great believer in raising my garden produce by organic methods.  No artificial fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.  I found a WEB page out there entitled DON'T PANIC EAT ORGANIC - GROW ORGANIC - BUY ORGANIC -  THINK ORGANIC  it loads a bit slow but has a lot of information and links to other sites of like topics  including Sustainable Agriculture. Go to > http://www.rain.org/~sals/my.html <

        So whether it's 100 acres of corn,  a 200x200 foot garden plot or a few rosesor begonias we are all planters.  Farmers, gardeners or flower growers we, along with nature's own plantings  all contribute to sustaining our very existence on this planet.

Have a Nice Easter