Raw Food with Alvina

Even the most seasoned gardeners will have a question about their garden once in a while, and you can bet that beginners will be full of questions. Gardening magazines can help with questions that arise involving nearly every aspect of gardening. Not only will gardening magazines give instructions on gardening, they also provide readers with the latest news in the gardening world.

Gardening magazine subscribers are privy to all of the latest information regarding things such as new gardening tools, fertilizers, and pesticides that are introduced to the market. For example, there are always new programs and clubs for gardeners to join, or perhaps a local gardening class that is available. When new tools are produced, such as a new kind of blower or vacuum, or new kinds of lawn mowers or tillers that are available, a gardening magazine is the best place to get all of the information. Not only will these magazines tell you about these products, they will also give you options on where to find them and for the lowest costs.

Gardening magazines offer hints and tips on how to rid your garden of those ever pesky insects. They will also discuss the many ways to recognize and fight diseases that may overtake your plants. The information you get from these magazines could be what ends up saving your garden.

Gardening magazines usually come with a gardening maintenance section that will instruct readers on things like how to prune, when to divide, which fertilizers would be better for your plants, and how much to water. They provide simple, easy to understand instructions on everything from how to deal with weeds to planting tulips.

Gardening magazines give ideas about landscaping and, if enforced, could change the entire outlook of your yard or flower garden. Garden designs can be difficult at best, and magazines can supply gardeners with inspiration and ideas on what will look good and suit their area.

Garden magazines also give subscribers the chance to write questions to be published so that they can get a specific answer from a gardening professional. They also provide gardeners with the chance to share their knowledge and expertise with the public by submitting articles of their choice for publication. One of the highest honors in gardening is to have your lawn or garden displayed in a magazine for everyone to see. It is definitely the pinnacle of gardening.

Gardening magazines provide gardeners with inspiration, ideas, instruction, and even entertainment. Many times gardening magazines will also provide readers with coupons that they can use to purchase items that will either improve, enlarge, or enhance their gardens. Gardening magazines are a primary source for both beginner and experienced gardeners everywhere to get all the latest news and age old gardening traditions at the same time.

By Jonathan White, environmental scientist.

Traditional vegetable gardens require an enormous amount of hard work and attention - weeding, feeding and strict planting schedules.  There is also the problem of seasonality, allowing beds to rest during the cooler months producing nothing at all.  Then we are told to plant green manure crops, add inorganic fertilizers and chemicals to adjust imbalanced soils.  It takes a lot of time, dedication and a year-round commitment to grow your own food the traditional way.
But does it really need to be that difficult?
Let me ask you this question.  Does a forest need to think how to grow?  Does its soil need to be turned every season?  Does someone come along every so often and plant seeds or take pH tests?  Does it get weeded or sprayed with toxic chemicals?
Of course not!

Traditional vegetable gardening techniques are focused on problems.  Have you noticed that gardening books are full of ways to fix problems?  I was a traditional gardener for many years and I found that the solution to most problems simply caused a new set of problems. In other words, the problem with problems is that problems create more problems.

Let’s take a look at a common traditional gardening practice and I will show you how a single problem can escalate into a whole host of problems.

Imagine a traditional vegetable garden, planted with rows of various vegetables.  There are fairly large bare patches between the vegetables.  To a traditional gardener, a bare patch is just a bare patch.  But to an ecologist, a bare patch is an empty niche space.  An empty niche space is simply an invitation for new life forms to take up residency.  Nature does not tolerate empty niche spaces and the most successful niche space fillers are weeds.  That’s what a weed is in ecological terms - a niche space filler.  Weeds are very good colonizing plants.  If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be called weeds.

Now back to our story.  Weeds will grow in the empty niche spaces.  Quite often there are too many weeds to pick out individually, so the traditional gardener uses a hoe to turn them into the soil.  I have read in many gardening books, even organic gardening books, that your hoe is your best friend.  So the message we are getting is that using a hoe is the solution to a problem.

However, I would like to show you how using a hoe actually creates a new set of problems.  Firstly, turning soil excites weed seeds, creating a new explosion of weeds.  And secondly, turning soil upsets the soil ecology.  The top layer of soil is generally dry and structureless.  By turning it, you are placing deeper structured soil on the surface and putting the structureless soil underneath.  Over time, the band of structureless soil widens.  Structureless soil has far less moisture holding capacity, so the garden now needs more water to keep the plants alive.

In addition to this problem, structureless soil cannot pass its nutrients onto the plants as effectively.  The garden now also needs the addition of fertilisers.  Many fertilisers kill the soil biology which is very important in building soil structure and plant nutrient availability.  The soil will eventually turn into a dead substance that doesn’t have the correct balance of nutrients to grow fully developed foods.  The foods will actually lack vitamins and minerals.  This problem has already occurred in modern-day agriculture.  Dr Tim Lobstein, Director of the Food Commission said. “… today’s agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but depends on chemical fertilisers that don’t replace the wide variety of nutrients plants and humans need.”  Over the past 60 years commercially grown foods have experienced a significant reduction in nutrient and mineral content.

Can you see how we started with the problem of weeds, but ended up with the new problems of lower water-holding capacity and infertile soils.  And eventually, we have the potentially serious problem of growing food with low nutrient content.  Traditional gardening techniques only ever strive to fix the symptom and not the cause.

However, there is a solution!  We must use a technique that combines pest ecology, plant ecology, soil ecology and crop management into a method that addresses the causes of these problems.  This technique must be efficient enough to be economically viable.  It also needs to be able to produce enough food, per given area, to compete against traditional techniques.

I have been testing an ecologically-based method of growing food for several years.  This method uses zero tillage, zero chemicals, has minimal weeds and requires a fraction of the physical attention (when compared to traditional vegetable gardening).  It also produces several times more, per given area, and provides food every single day of the year.

My ecologically-based garden mimics nature in such a way that the garden looks and acts like a natural ecosystem.  Succession layering of plants (just as we see in natural ecosystems) offers natural pest management.  It also naturally eliminates the need for crop rotation, resting beds or green manure crops.  Soil management is addressed in a natural way, and the result is that the soil’s structure and fertility get richer and richer, year after year.  Another benefit of this method is automatic regeneration through self-seeding.  This occurs naturally as dormant seeds germinate; filling empty niche spaces with desirable plants, and not weeds.

Unfortunately, the biggest challenge this method faces is convincing traditional gardeners of its benefits.  Like many industries, the gardening industry gets stuck in doing things a certain way.  The ecologically-based method requires such little human intervention that, in my opinion, many people will get frustrated with the lack of needing to control what’s happening.  Naturally people love to take control of their lives, but with this method you are allowing nature to take the reins.  It’s a test of faith in very simple natural laws.  However, in my experience these natural laws are 100% reliable.

Another reason that traditional gardeners may not like this method is that it takes away all the mysticism of being an expert.  You see, this method is so simple that any person, anywhere in the world, under any conditions, can do it.  And for a veteran gardener it can actually be quite threatening when an embarrassingly simple solution comes along.

I have no doubt that this is the way we will be growing food in the future.  It’s just commonsense.  Why wouldn’t we use a method that produces many times more food with a fraction of the effort?  I know it will take a little while to convince people that growing food is actually very instinctual and straightforward, but with persistence and proper explanation, people will embrace this method.

Why?  Because sanity always prevails…

…eventually!

Jonathan White is an Environmental Scientist and the founder of the Food4Wealth Method.  For more information see www.Food4Wealth.com

By Jonathan White, environmental scientist

For many people, composting is just an alternative way of dealing with rubbish.  It prevents the garbage bin from getting full and smelly.  It’s also a way of disposing of grass clippings and leaves, which saves many trips to the garbage depot.  Whilst these things are valid, they are not giving compost the full credibility it deserves.  Compost can be very valuable when used in the right way.

I have a completely different way of looking at compost.  To me, composting is a way of building valuable nutrients that will, one day, feed me and my family.  I only use compost on my vegetable gardens.  The way I manage my vegetable gardens means that composting is an integral part of the whole food production system.  I create compost as a way of collecting nutrients in one form (waste), and turning them into another form (food).

The average person buys food from a shop, consumes it and then sends the waste away.  This is simply buying nutrients, taking what you need for that precise moment, and disregarding the remainder.  It’s a nutrient flow that only flows in one direction, like a fancy car roaring down the road.  You admire the car for a moment, but after a second or two, it’s gone.

My goal is to slow down the car and then get it to do a U-turn.  I want to keep the nutrients within my property where I can capitalize on them.  By doing this, I am able to use the nutrients again, so I don’t have to buy them for a second time.  Surely, that’s going to save me money.  It may seem strange to think of nutrients in this way when we can’t even physically see them.  However, all organic materials contain nutrients.  My goal is to get those nutrients out of the form they are in and into a form that is useful to me and my family.

To put it in a different way; composting is a vehicle in which we are able to create a nutrient cycle within our property.  We are part of that cycle because we consume the nutrients when they are, for a brief time, in a useful form.  Then they return to the compost and slowly make their way into another useful form where we consume them again.  This cycle can go on and on indefinitely.  Of course, there will be many lost nutrients that you will never see again, but with a little diligence, you will be surprised at how much compost you can create, and hence, how many valuable nutrients you can recycle.

My composting system is large because I have a few large vegetable gardens.  I believe that the size of your vegetable garden should be determined by how much compost you can create, and not merely by the amount of space you have in your backyard.  To run a rich, high yielding vegetable garden you need to have some sort of soil conditioning plan, and the best thing for your soil is a generous layer of good compost on the surface a few times per year.

If you can create your own compost from the organic waste that you generate in your everyday life, then you can have a vegetable garden that is self-sustainable.  Once it is set up, it will never need nutrients in the form of store-bought fertilizers.  You will have established a flow of nutrients, and your nutrient-store will grow bigger and bigger, year after year.  Applying compost to your garden will have a very positive effect on your soil structure and fertility.  With good soil structure and plenty of organic material, you will be able to release nutrients that have been locked up and unavailable to your plants.  You will be speeding up the flow of nutrients, thus increasing your yield significantly.  Your soil will become alive and healthy with micro-organisms and soil bacteria that are beneficial to creating the conditions for proper plant growth.  Your vegetables will contain all the essential nutrients in the correct proportions, giving your body the vitamins and minerals it needs to function at its best.

Composting is very easy once you make it part of your everyday life.  A small container on your kitchen bench to collect scraps and a daily trip to the compost bin is all it takes.  It’s a small effort for huge rewards.  The golden rule in making compost is never to have large clumps of a single type of material.  Thin layers of hot and cold materials work best.  Cold materials include leaves, shredded newspaper and dried grass clippings.  Hot materials include fresh grass clippings, manures, weeds, discarded soft plants and kitchen scraps.

If you make composting part of you daily routine, along with an effective method of growing food, you can literally save thousands of dollars per year.  This is possible simply because you won’t have to keep buying nutrients over and over.  You will buy them once, hold onto them and then convert them into useful forms again and again.  It’s that simple!

Jonathan White is an Environmental Scientist and the founder of the Food4Wealth Method, a high yielding, low-maintenance form of vegetable gardening.  For more information see www.Food4Wealth.com

What’s the largest organ in your body? It’s your skin! It provides a protective covering for the other organs of the body. It changes to regulate your internal body temperature. And it’s a good indicator of overall health and well-being.

People spend thousands of dollars on skin preparations to make your skin look vibrant and glowing. They’re all topical products – products that we put on top of our skin. But if we spent just a fraction of the money we spend on these preparations on RAW FOODS, we’d begin to see an immediate change in the texture of our skin.

When you eat raw foods, you put more of the essential vitamins and amino acids your body needs into it. You’re also adding moisture – naturally. Raw foods have a much higher moisture content than cooked foods, simply because the cooking process takes out so much essential moisture.

Your skin is a mirror of what’s going on in the rest of your body. And when your organs and blood are fed the nutrition they need to function properly, that shows in your skin. Get your vitamins and moisture from foods like apples and carrots. When you do, then phrases like “inner beauty” and “inner glow” will be applied to YOU. Your skin is what’s presented to the rest of the world and healthy, glowing skin makes the best first impression.

When you start adding raw foods to your diet, things will just naturally fall into place. You’ll feel better. You’ll look better. People will react to you more positively. You’ll have so much more energy for your work, your friends, and your family. And this kind of energy is a self-perpetuating thing. You don’t need self-help books and expensive moisturizers and plastic surgery. When your body and skin are getting their essential nutrition with raw, uncooked foods, you’ll look and feel your best, NATURALLY!

One of the best things about gardening is felling warm, moist dirt in your bare hands, but you will often end up with blistered, chapped, and scraped skin. The solution to this problem is gardening gloves. The more time you spend getting down and dirty in the garden, the more you need gardening gloves. Gardening gloves will be able to ease some of the pain you would otherwise be subject to, letting you spend even more time playing in the dirt.

There are hundreds of different types of gloves on the market, and the kind of gardening glove you buy depends on the way you garden. Some gloves offer protection against specific substances or things, for example, leather gloves are not the best for working with chemicals or water. Many gardening gloves are specialized for pruning thorns, refilling gasoline tanks, or using a chain saw, while others are for general tasks such as raking, digging, and weeding.

After choosing the type of gardening glove you need, you must make sure and pick out the perfect fit. Gloves that are too big have a tendency to slip off while gloves that are too small could cause aches and cramps. Any glove that doesn’t fit could defeat the whole purpose of wearing gloves and cause blistering. To find a glove with the best fit possible, try the gloves on both hands, make a fist, and imitate the movements you make when gardening. If there is no pinching or slipping and the glove is comfortable then you have found your match.

Gardening gloves can be bought in many places and are produced by many companies, causing them all to have a different quality and price. Most gloves can be washed in cool water and then air dried. There are many different types of gloves you can purchase to satisfy your varying needs, such as cotton and cotton-polyester for general-purpose chores. These are among the most popular gloves and are perfect for light chores in cool and dry weather. Leather gloves can also be used for general chores but are heavier than cotton and polyester. Chemical resistant gloves will help protect your hands against oils, acids, herbicides, pesticides, and many other chemicals. Grip enhancing gloves are designed with rubber dots for extra gripping power. Cut and puncture resistant gloves are designed to offer extra protection against sharp edges

If you are the type person that only wears gloves as an optional luxury for various tasks, you should think seriously for using specialized gardening gloves for many of the activities you will be doing outside. There is really no reason not to wear gardening gloves; they protect your hands from the elements and don’t ever cost all that much.

Gardening has become one of the most popular hobbies, and you probably know a gardener or two that would love a gardening gift for their upcoming special occasion. There are hundreds of gardening gifts to buy for both the beginner and expert gardener, and the great thing about gardening gifts is they can be bought just about anywhere: online, nursery, feed store, farmer’s market, even your local Wal-Mart or grocery store.

If buying a gardening gift for a beginner, an instructional or informational book is always a good idea. Books like this will give tips on how to eliminate gardening nightmares like disease, insects, and weeds. They will tell gardeners which kind of plants thrive in different climates, as well as how much sun, water, and nutrients various types of plants require. Books like this can be purchased at nurseries, online, or at your local bookstore. If your gardening friend is a “computer nerd”, a gardening information CD might be a better gardening gift for them than a book.

Whether giving to a novice or expert professional, a plant is always a great gardening gift. Whether buying the traditional gift, like a poinsettia at Christmas, or just some random plant random, like moss, a plant is sure to be greatly appreciated and enjoyed. Another idea is to buy seeds or just a bulb for someone to transplant. Giving a perennial would be a gift that keeps on giving.

Theme gardening gifts using plants can also be loads of fun. An herb can come with an attached card including a recipe using that herb. A plant that produces nectar and will attract butterflies can be coupled with a book on butterflies.

Possibly the best and most common, gardening gift is gardening tools. This can be anything as simple as a hoe or rake to something more high-tech like an electric blower or vacuum. These are good for removing debris, leaves, or grass from driveways and side walks. Other favorites are gloves, hedge trimmers, and sprinklers.

An excellent gardening gift that is rarely though of is a calendar. Calendar’s can serve dual purposes; it can be decorative with beautiful gardening themes, or can be used to keep up with the moon phase that affects most all plants. A farmer’s almanac is also a good idea, it is full of information regarding the weather, moon phase, when to plant, when to prune; it is the best guidebook to gardening there is.

The ultimate gardening gift is for any gardener is a gift certificate to a nursery or store where gardening tools or plants are available. This way, your friend can get any tool they do not have in their collection, or any kind of plant their heart desires.

Gift giving is a difficult task at best, but if you have gardeners for friends, a gardening gift is an easy way out and makes your gift buying simple. Gardening gifts can range anywhere from tools to actual plants and with gardening gifts you have a wide range of costs to choose from. You can give a cheap pair of gloves or an expensive power tiller. So the next time you go gift shopping, thing about a gardening gift for your friends with green thumbs!

Nearly every gardener has some type of gardening equipment. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to have a garden without used gardening equipment. What kind of gardening equipment you use will obviously depend on the size and extent of your garden, what you are able to handle, if you want to spend a lot of time in your garden or get done quickly, and finally, how much money you are willing to spend.

While many gardeners do not have expensive or high-tech gardening tools, all of them have some type of gardening equipment for cultivating. Tools for cultivating can include both hand held tools and power tools. What kind you buy depends on how serious of a gardener you are. Hand tools include your everyday items like shovels, spading forks, rakes, trowels, and diggers. These can all be used to get a garden ready for planting and are relatively easy and do not require much strength to use. Other tools include a wheel cultivator, pickax, and mattock.

While power tools are a little more expensive than hand tools, they really cut down on the hard labor. The most essential piece of gardening equipment is undoubtedly the tiller. The tiller will break up the ground and get it ready for planting, chop up any debris, and help mix in fertilizer and compost. If you don’t want to spend the money on a tiller you can hire someone or rent a tiller for one time use. Other power tools that are very popular include chippers, garden shredders, and chain-saws.

If you have shrubs, hedges, or small trees in your yard, pruning tools are a vital piece of gardening equipment. Pruning shears are good for branches about ¾” in diameter, while lopping shears can handle branches from a half inch up to about 2 inches. Pole pruners are on a pole and can reach branches about 15 feet above ground. Hedge shears and pruning saws are both larger, more heavy duty pruning tools for the serious gardener.

Since your plants must be watered in order to survive, and lets face it, it doesn’t rain whenever we want it to, gardening equipment for watering is a must have. The one thing you can’t get along without is a water hose, everything after that is optional. Many gardeners use sprinklers or s drip irrigation hose. There are even timers you can purchase for sprinklers or drip hoses, if you are willing to drop the extra cash.

Gardening without gardening equipment would be a nightmare. Sure there are some people who enjoy getting a little dirty while they plant their flowers, but even those types of people have the most basic of gardening tools, like a rake or a hoe. Gardening equipment is a part of gardening, as important as the dirt and the seeds.

Gardening books come in all different shapes and sizes and offer more information on gardening than can be found anywhere else. Anything anyone ever wanted to know about gardening can be found in a gardening book. Gardening books are not expensive, and will end up being worth much more than you will pay for one. Not only can gardening books be used for personal use, they are also an excellent gift for a gardening friend.

For the beginner, gardening books are almost a necessity in starting a garden. Books will give step-by-step instructions and easy to understand directions on how to plant a garden, from breaking up the dirt to how much water your plants need. They will give all of the necessary details about every type of plant, such as how much light they need to survive, how often they need to be watered, how much nutrients must be added to the soil, and any other little quirks that plants have.

Gardening books are very informational and range anywhere from just a pamphlet size book with a few pages to a novel size book with hundreds of pages. The information provided is top notch and a lot of it cannot be found anywhere else. Books provide hints and tips on how to make your plants healthier, how to keep your garden free of weeds, and how to prevent against and fight diseases.

Often times gardening books will give readers ideas they had never thought of before. For example, there are hundreds of vegetables and herbs out there that many people would never think of growing in their backyard, but would be very good to grow in your own personal garden. There are also millions of flowers many people don’t think about but that are very beautiful. There are hundreds of people that would probably trade their rose bush for an exotic flower, and with a gardening book they could read about what types of flowers are available and will grow in their area.

Whether you enjoy gardening or not, gardening books are wonderful gifts if you have a gardening friend. It is personalized and you can give a great gift that isn’t that expensive. You could even give it to someone who doesn’t garden. Who knows, maybe they will be interested and decide to plant a garden.

Gardening books are excellent for any type of gardener at any level. No matter how much gardening knowledge and experience you have, I guarantee you there is a gardening book somewhere that has something in it you don’t know. Gardening books can be used no matter what you grow: shrubs, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and trees, even those of you who grow weeds!

Garden advice is not that hard to come by. In fact, you can get gardening advice from another gardener, in a gardening catalogue, gardening books, gardening magazines, and even on the Internet. Although you will have variations with every plant, there is some gardening advice that is universal and that goes for any plant.

For example, the gardening advice given for planting is pretty much uniform. You must place plants where they will have room to grow so they don’t overcrowd each other. Good air flow is a plus, and plants must be in a position where they will receive adequate amounts of sunlight. Advice will always tell you to add some type of nutrients to the soil to lead to better plant growth, such as mulch or compost.

Gardening advice on watering plants is a little more varied, because every type of plant needs different amounts of water. For example, you wouldn’t want to water a cactus near as much as you water a tomato plant. How much you water will obviously also depend on where you live, the climate, and how much rain your area receives.

Gardening advice from nearly every source will tell you that your plants not only need fertilize when you first plant them, they will also needed to be fertilized throughout their growing season. What type of fertilize used will depend on the soil content and pH balance, but fertilize will definitely be needed on most all plants. Compost can be used instead and it is easy to find advice on how to make a compost pile as well as when fertilize and compost needs to be used.

Gardening advice on weeds, insects, disease, and how to get rid of them is probably the most sought after advice in all of gardening. These pests invade all gardens and if you don’t get rid of them, they will take over and ruin your garden. There are many different chemicals and pesticides that can be used, and gardening advice will usually clue gardeners in on which chemicals are better, which are harmful, and which ones are easier to administer.

Gardening is not an easy task; you have to fight against many outside forces, such as weather, insects, disease, and weeds. Even the most seasoned of gardeners will seek out gardening advice once in a while. Who wouldn’t when there are so many forces that could take a garden out? There is a lot of general gardening advice on the market that goes for any plant, but if you look a little harder you will find specific advice for that one plant that is the only one giving you trouble. Gardening advice is relatively easy to find, and while you may come across the occasional bad apple, most of it is relatively sound and will help with any gardening question.