You are here: Home / Archives for Healthy Gardening

A Healthy Garden Makes Seniors Healthy

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes you forget the hour whether its already sunset. Meaning, your garden seems to be your paradise surrounded with lots of natures’ ever growing plants that you don’t want to leave the heavenly atmosphere you feel in the garden.

Imagine you have an abundant fresh harvest derived from your toil, what satisfaction do you feel, and what that affects your mental and physical conditions. Does it increase your cravings for more activities, thus makes you more interested to do more.

Benefits You Can Get In Your Garden

1) With that, your body through gardening ,enriches your diet, your spirit, and strengthen your body against sickness.

2) Tending your garden plants provides you with an outdoors exercise in order to perspire, which is much better than working out in the gym. In the garden you can get  the fresh early morning sunlight which is good for the body and mind.

]]>

3) While in your garden busy with your plants, you’ll also hear the sweet serenades of the birds’ song an addition to your happy hour of tilling the soil with music from the birds.

4) Gardening contributes to bone-building like weight training can help build bones. The different tasks in your garden require your body to shift and move in different positions making your muscles flexible and adds strength to your body.

5) During your gardening activities, you would perform lifting, stretching, walking, kneeling, climbing weeding and other chores. These tasks forced your body to react based on the situation your body called for, and this is good for your health.

6) Add to this, while tending your plants with efforts, you’re likely to burn 250 – 350 calories, that includes weeding, digging, etc. For an hour of physical activities you’d consume lots of nutritious foods in exchange for the efforts you’ve made.

7) Staying in the garden for a couple of hours creates an atmosphere of peace of mind, because of the presence of natural therapy medical field can’t give the answer. This can be explained by merely observation but not scientifically proven that exposure to morning sunlight at least an can improve our body’s resistance to some minor illness.

This is manifested in your own natural feeling mode, that the smells of beautiful flowers, the songs of the birds around, the greenery landscape of your plants is enough to restore your senses to a perfect state conditions.

Cris Ramasasa, Freelance writer, writes about home gardening and Internet marketing tips. You can get a copy of his latest ebook “Discover How  to get started in FlowerGardening” and  “Vegetable Gardening made Easy” and lots of tips, Free articles, and bonuses at: www.crisramasasa.com

With healthy, natural soil, learn how your plants and the environment can thrive in this free gardening video about how to use organic fertilizers on plants. Expert: Michael Clark Contact: www.tropicofcapricornsantafe.com Bio: Michael Clark is a trained horticulturist with a BS in agriculture and a strong sense of responsibility for the natural world. He is the co-founder of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. Filmmaker: melissa jenkins

Filed Under: Healthy Gardening Tagged With: , , ,

Tips For Healthy Garden Soil

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A healthy garden grows from healthy soil. When the soil in your garden is healthy, your plants are most resistant to disease. Their roots can reach into the soil to extract water and nutrients, making these plants more vigorous. If you want to create healthy garden soil, you need to find a way to improve the conditions in the garden. Often, garden soil is poorly drained, compacted, and low on nutrients. It may also have a pH that is out of the neutral to slightly acidic soil pH that most plants love.

Identifying Common Soil Problems

Is your soil tough? If you find that water pools on the top of your soil and does not drain into it, you may have soil that is far too tough – compacted soil. You may also have poor drainage, which can be caused by an excess of clay in your soil.

If your plants seem to have stunted growth and will not flourish, even if your soil seems to be well-drained, you may have trouble with soil pH and nutrients.

Check out your soil pH using a home test kit. While vegetables can be happy in soil that is slightly acidic, try to avoid very acidic soils under a pH of 5.5 or alkaline soils above 8. Plants thrive in the center and prefer not to grow in extremes.

Soil nutrient levels may also be the reason behind poor plant growth. While you may fertilize with natural or artificial fertilizers, these fertilizers often include nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium but no trace minerals. Trace minerals are also essential to plant growth and can make the difference between an insipid-looking garden and a stunning one.

Compost Can Help Solve Common Soil Problems

While composting isn’t the answer to every garden question, it is certainly the answer to many of them! Compost is an excellent soil amendment.

The light compost can be mixed with garden soil to improve the soil structure and drainage using light, organic-rich natural materials. For gardens with pooling water, this helps the water drain. Compost also acts as an erosion control when used as a top-dressing, preserving soil nutrients.

Gardens with a poor pH and lack of soil nutrients will also benefit from an infusion of compost, which is full of soil microbes that make soil nutrients more available to plants. It tends to be an ideal pH for most gardens and can shift the soil pH balance in a more favorable direction. Compost is also full of trace minerals and the essential big three fertilizer elements for the garden.

Adding compost to a garden bed is one of the most valuable things that you can do as a gardener. Compost acts as a soil amendment and a fertilizer. It creates gardens that are more resilient to disease. If your garden looks like it needs healthier soil, begin by adding compost to the garden beds.

Lars Handley is a master composter based in Dallas, Texas. Want to learn more? Visit his Composting site to learn every aspect of making compost. Don’t miss the Composting Q&A page where you can ask a question and get a personal response.

Filed Under: Healthy Gardening Tagged With: , , ,

Growing A Healthy Garden Was Harder Than I Thought

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Seems hard to believe now as I gaze over my bountiful garden, but that first experience was one I’ll never forget. What a disaster. I didn’t think I’d ever set foodt in my backyard again, much less my garden.

A couple of weeks after I moved into my new house, I decided a garden was just the thing I needed. I now had grass to mow and bushes to trim, so a garden would be a great addition. Fresh produce for my kitchen should be easy to grow, right? Just how hard could it be?

Checking out the yard, I found a bare patch of land where it looked like a garden had been attempted, but it didn’t look like anything had actually grown. The area was full of rocks and weeds, not a plant in sight. I was determined to have a garden so I cleared out the debris, leaving just the dirt. At this point, though, I didn’t understand the difference between “dirt” and “soil.” What I had was a dry, rock-hard, lifeless section of dirt.

]]>

Once the clearing was done, I wanted the garden area to look nice. I put some boards around it for a border to keep out the dogs. I added some rocks I had collected to the border, trying to be “decretive.” Not quite sure just what I was thinking.

Okay, garden ready, off to the nursery I went. All those packets of seeds immediately attracted my eye. Corn, tomatoes, onions, peas. Ymmm. I could already taste all the veggies coming from my garden. I opened a packet, poked a hole in the hard ground, and dropped in a seed. After weeks of faithfully watering my garden, it finally dawned on me that nothing was going to grow. I continued to water, hoping something might just pop up. But alas, after clearing away that awful debris, I had nothing to show for all my hard work. I was miserable.

But I wasn’t going to give up. I logged onto the internet, knowing the answer to my problem would be quickly found. After some research, there is was … just what I needed. I realized that more than dirt, seeds, and water were needed to grow a garden. To grow a healthy garden, I learned how soil consistency, nutrients, ideal watering conditions, and the different seasons affect the garden. I was now ready for the next planting season.

Ready to start a new garden? Learn from my mistakes. Do your research on the plants you should grow for your particular climate. Good soil, good fertilizer, and good garden tools are the key to growing a healthy garden. You’ll be pleased with the final results. Like me, you’ll soon be enjoying wonderful veggies from your garden.

Davis Anderson is a gardening fanatic who now enjoys growing — and eating — really good veggies and fruit from her garden. She learned her gardening technique at http://growingahealthygarden.blogspot.com.  Find out how she grows her garden at Auntees-Garden.com.

Visit: www.HomeOrganicGarden.net Organic gardening is much more then just avoiding the use of chemicals on your garden. For many people it is an outlook on living using nature’s laws to grow their fruits, vegetables, and other plants naturally. This is usually a personal choice made in light of much research done into the importance of diet as it relates to our health and longevity. Studies have shown that organically grown foods have higher concentrations of vitamins and minerals then those grown using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Organically grown fruits and vegetables are not only better health wise but they also avoid the accidental exposure to those chemical agents that are used in large scale commercial farming that is so common in today’s world. http Here are 10 key components that are a fundamental part of organic gardening. 1. Healthy Soil – This is probably the most fundamental aspect of any organic garden. Healthy soil that is replenished naturally will grow healthy food stuffs year after year. Organic fertilizers such as manure and composted garden, yard, and kitchen waste are easily recycled back into the earth creating nutrient rich soil that will grow all manner of healthy plants. 2. Avoid all chemical or synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. This will not only ensure that your soil stays naturally organic but it also relieves the worry of harm to your family and pets should they come in contact with these dangerous …
Video Rating: 0 / 5

Filed Under: Healthy Gardening Tagged With: , , , , ,