How To Grow A Beautiful Organic Garden

 

Some homeowners put a great deal of care and detail into their yards. From ponds and stone walkways to rose beds and gazebos, people take landscaping seriously. Something that may look good in your yard this year is an organic garden. If you're not sure about how to garden organically, here are some tips.

If you want to grow vegetables, but do not have the room, consider planting vegetables that grow on a vine. Vegetables like squash, melons, and tomatoes can be trained to grow up along a trellis or fence. You can make use of vertical space to get the vegetable garden that you want.

A great way to deal with weeds in a safe and nontoxic way, is to use a spray bottle of diluted dish soap to treat areas with overgrowth in your garden. Use a ratio of one tablespoon of mild dish soap per 16 ounces of water. Spray the weeds once a day and with in a week they should shrivel up and be easier to pull out.

Making your own compost for organic gardening is extremely simple and easy to do. It provides soil of gardens with rich nutrients and keeps soil cool during summer months. You can use kitchen waste, sawdust, aquarium water, coffee grounds, tea leaves, rabbit or hamster droppings, a thin layer of lawn clippings, spices and eggshells in your compost.

Make mulch spreading easier with the right tools. After laying out the mulch, use a flat-headed rake to efficiently spread the manure around. The tines of the rake help pull the mulch and spread it, while the flat side of the rake evens out the area. Use the rake with a pushing and pulling motion.

An organic garden might not have the appeal of a pond with those orange-colored koi, but you will certainly get a lot more out of your garden "literally" than you'll get out of ornamental fish or some fancy stone tiles in the yard. Take advantage of organics by learning how to garden from the article above.

How To Start An Organic Garden

As it is with starting any kind of garden, the first thing to know is what kind of garden you want for yourself— is it to be a herb or vegetable garden, a flower cutting bed or simply an ornamental planting bed? This is the goal-setting part. Once you have set your mind on this, the next important thing is the site selection.

For vegetable gardens, pick a place which receives enough sun throughout the day. The site must also drain well at all seasons. Once the site is selected, now is the time to decide on the shape and size of the field. You can take the help of a garden hose for this, or stakes and strings for beds with a more regular geometrical shape.

Soil

The next step is to prepare the soil. In case of an organic garden, you must make sure that you add a lot of compost to your soil and mix it well with soil to amend the current quality of the soil. Once you have done this, you may also send some soil samples to your nearest cooperation extension services for testing purposes. They will be able to tell you if the soil is okay for an organic garden.

Planting

Plant selection and purchase is another very vital step. For an organic garden, the best thing is to buy the plants from garden and home centers that only sell organically-grown plants, or if you are staring early in the season, purchase organic seeds and grow your own plants.

Before planting, make sure to douse the plants well with water. Thoroughly moist root balls will make it easier for your plants to adjust with their surroundings. Once you are over with planting all the plants, cover the whole bed with at least 3 inches or organic mulch. For this purpose, you can use organic materials such as grass clippings, chopped leaves, hay, or shredded bark. this will help the soil retain moisture well. Once you have finished with all this task, make sure to do some labeling of the plants and design a workable map of your organic garden for future reference.
Follow these tips and before you know it, you will have a thriving organic garden!

Creative Cooking Tips Every Cook Should Know

Many people think that learning to cook is a difficult thing to do. Keep reading for a handful of great cooking tips to help develop your inner chef.

Overdo it a little when you bake a pie crust. It will help if you achieve a darker, more delicious golden caramel color, rather than stopping when the crust is still pale. The color on your pie signifies that the caramelizing process is complete in your crust, yielding a scrumptious dessert.

You need to prepare to cook a meal before you can actually cook it. First, check that you have everything you need to get started. Get everything set to cook the next day. Determine if you have you got the right utensils, etc. Having everything ready will take some of the stress off and increase the chances of your success.

If you are cooking a meal for some important occasion, stick with a tried and true recipe. Do not try to cook something new for a big day. When you always strive to follow this, your time in the kitchen will result in less stress.

People mainly use plenty of apples in cooking during the winter and fall months, but if not stored properly they quickly go bad. Store them in your fridge or basement, in plastic bags that are loosely tied, as they tend to spoil in dry warm areas. Sort your apples carefully before storing them, as one bad apple will end up spoiling the rest.

Will you be making a meal using fresh basil? In a glass put a lot of fresh basil inside. Fill the container with enough water to cover the stems. This will help to keep it from going bad for quite a few days. Change the water once in awhile, and before long roots will even form on the basil. Periodically prune the fresh basil; this will stimulate the plant to continue growing for a week or so.

A great cooking tip to employ is to cook your vegetables in chicken broth. Not only will chicken broth help to keep vegetables from getting stuck to the pan, but they will add some nice flavors to the dish. Chicken broth is readily available at most grocery stores, and it is very affordably priced.

By using a few tips from the above article, you will easily be able to improve your culinary skills. When you have this information in your cooking arsenal, it is easy to step into the kitchen and start on your next culinary delight. Your dishes will be delicious and sure to please everyone.

Help Your Whole Family To Enjoy Juicing

 

There are a lot of fruits and vegetables out there that can really provide a powerful punch of health benefits to your daily life. A great way to receive these benefits is to start juicing. Fresh juice will provide you with the nutrients your body needs to run, and is far more effective than its processed or frozen counterpart. Fresh juice will be a healthy treat for you to enjoy daily!

Do some trial and error to find what sort of juice mixes you like. Softer fruits like peaches or strawberries will have a much thicker consistency than harder fruits like apples. Mix them up in different amounts to see what makes the consistency of drink that you like the best. The more you like it, the more you will drink it!

When making carrot juice, make absolutely sure to get fresh, healthy carrots. Signs of old carrots are rubberiness, limpness, wilted tops, and excessive cracking. Look for carrots that have a full color, are firm to the touch, and have green, leafy tops. These carrots will produce the freshest, sweetest juice.

Make sure your juicer is in a visible location on your counter. In this way, you will be more likely to use it. Keeping the juicer visible adds an extra bit of convenience.

Leaving some seeds in your juicer is perfectly fine! Larger seeds such as cherry pits or sometimes citrus seeds might actually damage your juicer, though, so it's best to consider the size and firmness of the seeds in the items you're juicing before throwing them in whole with reckless abandon!

You will see that there are a lot of ways you can fit juice into your daily intake. As a quick snack, or a daily vitamin supplement, fresh juice fits in anywhere. The benefits of drinking freshly made juice daily are enormous! Begin juicing as part of your fitness plan.

Great Advice For Growing Great Organic Gardens

 

Organic gardening can yield many healthy benefits, but figuring out how to prepare it properly can be a challenge. You also have a large variety of seeds you can choose from as well. Here are some steps you can take to ensure you get what you need to grow your organic garden.

Add aspirin to your plants to help them fight sickness. Dissolve 1 aspirin per gallon of water for a plant disease fighting solution. All you need to do is spray the plants with the solution in order to battle common ailments. Apply at three week intervals.

Indoor plants need an environment that is between 65 and 75 degrees. Plants require a warmer climate to grow. If this is a little too warm for your house, grow your organic plants under a heat lamp.

Coat your flower beds with a few inches of an organic mulch. Mulch discourages weeds and helps retain moisture while adding nutrients to your flower bed. By adding mulch, you can give your flower beds a finished appearance.

You should work efficiently, instead of working hard in your garden, to simplify things. Keep all of your tools together; do not waste time looking for them! Set up the tools you will need for your day prior to hitting the garden, then put them away neatly at the end of your gardening session. One way to keep your tools handy is to use a belt especially designed to hold them. An alternative is to wear a garment with multiple pockets that are big enough to hold your more commonly used tools.

Have plastic bags on hand to put over dirty gardening shoes. This allows you to maintain your flow so you can rapidly get back to your gardening.

Use a laundry basket to help you collect produce from your garden. The laundry basket is a perfect strainer for any produce run off. If you leave your produce in the basket while rinsing it, the basket will be able to serve as a strainer, with the extra water dripping out the holes in the bottom of the basket.

In an organic garden, ruffle any seedlings with a piece of cardboard, or even your hand, a couple times each day. This will sound a bit strange. However, it has been proven to cause plants to grow larger.

As you read, an organic garden can be incredibly important to your current and future dietary habits and so is understanding all the different kinds of plants you can grow. Start with the tips above to grow the best possible organic garden for your family.

Fruits And Vegetables Make Great Juices For Health

Juicing can be a great way to lose weight and improve your overall health, but many people aren't sure how to go about it. There are a lot of different things that you can juice to create healthy, delicious drinks right in your own home for a fraction of the cost.

For healthier juices, try vegetables with dark green tints and then build upon that with other items. To maximize health benefits, you should aim for the juice to contain between fifty and seventy-five percent chard, spinach, broccoli, or a similar vegetable. Use the rest of the recipe for sweet fruit to give it more flavor.

Drink your juice soon after making it if you are looking to benefit from the health benefits. Juice starts to lose its benefits as soon as it comes out of the fruit or veggie. The longer you let it sit, the more it will lose, so go ahead and drink it as soon as possible to be able to let your body enjoy all the nutrients.

If storing your juice, use only air tight containers to avoid the damage from oxidation. Refrigerate your juice and as a little helper, add in just a little bit of lemon juice to help keep your juice as fresh as possible. Following these steps should lead you to still have tasty, healthy juice even hours after you did the juicing.

The healthiest color for your body is green, so add things like spinach, parsley, broccoli, and chard in order to provide your body healthy nutrients. You should aim for juices that are comprised of between 50 and 70 percent greens. The addition of other fruits and veggies is simply to add more flavor. When you make juices primarily of fruit, they tend to be less healthy as they have much more sugar than those juices made with mostly greens.

As you can see, there are a lot of great healthy options to keep your juicing diet fresh and exciting. Try a juicing diet today, and see what kind of results it can bring you! Make sure to keep the tips from this article in mind to get the best out of your juicing diet.