Dr. Bronner's TEA TREE Pure-Castile Soap is our phenomenal new soap for the millennium. The therapeutic benefits of Tea Tree Oil can now be reaped in our unsurpassed pure-castile base. Use for facial cleansing and cleaning minor cuts and scrapes, as well as everyday bathing. Soap is made by saponifying a fat or oil with a strong alkali. A fat or oil is a triglyceride, which means that three fatty acids of various carbon lengths are attached to a glycerine backbone. The strong alkali is either sodium (for bars) or potassium (for liquids) hydroxide. The saponification process is a simple one-step reaction with no waste generated: the glycerine is split off from the fatty acids, and the fatty acids combine with the sodium or potassium to form soap, while the hydroxide forms water. The result is soap, glycerin and water (no alkali remains). Quality soap-making consists in great part in choosing the right proportions of the right oils with their different fatty acids. Most commercial soaps skimp on quality because of cost, and use lots of tallow from beef fat with a little bit of coconut or palm kernel oil. Our unsurpassed soaps use olive, hemp, and palm oils instead of tallow, and use three to four times more coconut oil than commercial soaps. Saponified coconut oil generates high-lather cleansing even in hard water because it has shorter-chain saturated fatty acids. Hemp, olive, and palm based soaps make a mild, smooth, creamy lather, because these oils contain longer chain unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Dr. Bronner's makes a higher quality soap in other ways as well. Unlike most commercial soapmakers who distill the glycerin out of their soaps to sell, we retain it in our soap for its superb moisturizing qualities. We also superfat our soap with olive fatty acid, which both ensures that there is no free alkali, and lowers the pH, making a milder, smoother lather. We use rosemary extract and plant-derived vitamin antioxidants to protect freshness (the rosemary is effective at 0.005%, so it contributes absolutely no scent). We do not add any chelating agents, dyes, whiteners, or synthetic fragrances. We use only 100% pure high quality essential oils. Our liquid soaps are so concentrated that they are only a few percent away from being a solid, which ecologically saves on packaging materials. They are a superb value, costing less than less-concentrated inferior detergent body-wash ''liquid soaps.'' Our soaps are most popular for at-home washing, but they also are the choice when camping and hiking, as our soaps are so biodegradable and nature-friendly. Dr. Bronner's soaps have spread by quality and word of mouth alone into virtually every health food store in the country. Unsolicited articles raving about our soaps have appeared in magazines and newspapers as diverse as Natural Health, Outdoor Gear, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal,

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) Found throughout North America and widely distributed around the globe, few mushrooms can boast such adaptivity and variety of colors, hence the name ''versicolor''. Logs and stumps can be used for cultivation; after incubating the logs may be partially buried, horizontally-oriented, to conserve water during fruiting. This species is often used to make medicinal teas, and is one of the most well-studied medicinal mushrooms in the world. Our Plug Spawn comes complete with our user-friendly, fully illustrated 10-page instruction booklet. Fungi Perfecti offers plug spawn of a number of hardy gourmet and medicinal mushroom species: Reishi, The Oregon Polypore, Maitake, The Conifer Coral, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Pearl and Phoenix Oyster, Chicken of the Woods and Turkey Tail. These sterilized birch plugs are spirally grooved and fully colonized by pure mushroom mycelium, and are available in packages of approximately 100 or 300 dowels (our Shiitake Plug Spawn is also available in packages of approximately 1000 and 5000 dowels). By using the dowels to inoculate cut hardwood logs or stumps, mushroom mycelium can be encouraged to grow throughout or colonize the wood. Once the wood is fully colonized (typically 9-12 months) mushrooms will spring forth from cracks or channels in the wood. Generally, the best time of year to inoculate logs and stumps is in the Spring, after your last hard frost. However, you can inoculate your logs any time up to 2-3 weeks before consistently (i.e. 'round the clock) freezing temperatures set in for the Winter. The idea is to allow the mushroom mycelium growing on the Plug Spawn time to establish itself in its new home before it goes into dormancy over the Winter. Logs can be left outdoors over the Winter, under a layer of straw or a burlap tarp, shade cloth or other vapor-permeable cover (do not use plastic tarps: this can cause mold to form). In areas where the Winter is exceptionally harsh, logs can be stored in a shed, barn, garage or other outbuilding. Our Plug Spawn prefers to grow on hardwoods, with the exception of the Conifer Coral Mushroom, which grows on conifers, and the Phoenix Oyster, which grows well on firs. Most species can be grown on either logs or stumps. Non-aromatic hardwoods such as oak, poplar (cottonwood), elm, maple and similar woods are very good candidates for log cultivation. Alder is a good wood for the cultivation of Oyster and Shiitake mushrooms, but must be kept above ground because it will decompose quickly in contact with the soil. (We do not recommend using aromatic woods such as cedar or eucalyptus.) Thick-barked woods are preferable over ''paper-bark'' woods such as birch, and any log that is shedding it's bark should not be used. Logs should be cut one to three months in advance of plugging. Cutting your logs in the late Winter or early Spring helps to insure that they have a high sugar content, although th

Dry formulation is easy to use-won't "burn" delicate seedling.

Everything you need to grow an organic salad garden!

Dutch hyacinths are beloved not only for their range of rich jewel colors and pastels.

These disease-resistant tulips return year after year to make a spectacular showing,