Organic Vegetable Gardening. A Labor Of Love

Successful organic vegetable gardening can require a lot of work and careful planning. This includes the preparation of the soil by enriching it and protecting the soil from the infestation of harmful insects.

Organic vegetable gardening is different from conventional gardening in two major ways. They differ from the usage of fertilizers and pest control. The fertility of the soil depends upon three components: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Nitrogen increases the growth of lush foliage. Phosphorus helps with strong roots and sterns. Potassium protects the plants from disease and cold. These nutrients are needed for every plant that stays alkaline for more than a year. In conventional methods, synthetic fertilizers are used to enrich the soil. Commercial fertilizers are available as a mixture of the three main ingredients mentioned. However, in organic vegetable gardening, these nutrients are added in a different manner.

Composting is a very good organic way of enriching the soil. Compost can be made easily in pots from your backyard with garden and kitchen refuse. Materials like leaves, lawn cutting, pine needles, weeds, carrot tops, spoiled fruit and vegetable, animal manure and the like, can be used to make good compost. The decomposition of the organic material forms bacteria and fungi in the soil. This helps in converting unavailable nutrients like nitrogen to ammonia and nitrates making it usable for the plants. This process is called nitrification. Rock phosphates, natural occurring deposits of phosphorus in combination with calcium, can be mixed with the compost. Natural potassium occurs in substances like wood ashes, tobacco stems, seaweed, potash salts and ground rock potash. They can be also mixed for organic vegetable gardening.

The organic material takes longer to decompose and affect the soil. Hence it should be added at least a fortnight before planting the vegetables.

The pH scale runs from 0 to 14. 0 indicates extreme acidic conditions. 14 is extreme alkaline and 7 indicates a neutral soil. The most inexpensive and efficient material for raising the pH is ground limestone. Dolomite limestone has an additional ingredient, magnesium, which many soils lack. If the pH of the soil is alkaline, finely ground sulphur is used to lower it.

Pest control in organic gardens is also done in a different manner. Organic vegetable gardening relies in the theory of manageable pest levels. This model theory, suggests that the pests are not to be completely eradicated, but kept at an easily manageable level maintaining the balance and harmony.

When pest resistant varieties are planted, natural predators and parasites are used to eat up the harmful insects. Mulching the soil helps to avoid direct contact with sunlight, as the harmful organisms require bright sunlight to grow. These methods using organic vegetable gardening techniques will help in raising a healthy and abundant crop.

Mike Batey
http://mjbmarketing.info/gardening

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Gardening Keeps You Fit and Sexy

Wave goodbye to treadmills, weights and regimented exercise programs and get in shape in your own backyard. You don't need a gym to keep you fit and sexy if you have a garden.

The fitness gospel has long preached the virtues of exercising in sweaty gyms and ugly Lycra, but there is another option. Experts agree that a regular dose of gardening promotes a sense of well-being, raises your fitness levels and makes you look sexy.

According to Dr. Steven Palmer, Director of the Center for Stress Management and a professor at City University, gardening is an excellent form of stress management and therapy. Dr. Alison Joy, a physician, agrees. She says, "People love gardening and there's very little injury involved".

Gardening is rarely promoted as a form of exercise but regular, energetic and varied sessions in the open air offer the perfect workout for men and women. In fact, according to the latest research, digging burns about double the calories per minute of a more commonly endorsed form of exercise, such as biking. Even more startling, is the discovery that aerobics is less of a calorie-burner than a vigorous session of digging. Other gardening tasks are also good sources of weight loss - hedge trimming burns more calories than cycling, and mowing outstrips biking and aerobics. Believe it or not, a job as banal as raking leaves can actually qualify as a cardiovascular activity - but it has to do with heavy raking.

Yet no-one talks about the huge health benefits that gardening brings. It is definitely a calorie-burner and the beauty of it is that it's a bit like a game of golf, whether you're gardening at 18 or 90, the health and psychological benefits are the same.

Research also shows that more people prefer to spend time in their garden than go to the pub or play golf. For some, the garden holds more appeal than even the bedroom - an astonishing one in four women prefers her garden than sex.

The beauty of gardening is that anybody can do it. Unlike the bleak, goal challenging rigors of the gym, gardening is great fun. For some, gardening is more productive than going to the gym. It is less sweaty and it makes you feel on the top of the world. Even so, it's vital not to overdo things by approaching your garden in a frenzied manner, hell-bent on transforming it from a rubbish dump to a metropolitan Eden in a matter of hours.

Like any sports, gardening can cause injury. "It's all boils down to techniques", explains Nigel Wallace of the Fitness Industry Association. "Most people don't bend their knees but their backs." "The worst thing in lifting pots or logs is to bend forward in a standing position", say osteopath Leo Meyer. "It puts enormous strain on the spine. Bend your knees, keep the pots as close to your body as possible and avoid lifting with your back bent."

Variety - mowing for a few minutes and raking the leaves the next - is the best way to avoid injury. It's also great for all-around body conditioning.

Mike Batey
http://maximumheavytraffic.com/mikbat673/
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Gardening Equipment - Do You Need It?

Ok, you're knee deep in your garden, all engrossed and blissed out, so are you going to break the spell, get up and search around for exactly the right tool to finish what you're trying to accomplish?

Well, if that tool isn't conveniently to hand, then chances are, you're going to improvise and make do with what you can lay your hands on in the immediate area.

That shiny new gardening tool might look really cool, and well it's the latest thing so you've just got to have it, right? Before you part with your hard-earned cash, I suggest you think long and hard about whether you'll actually use it. Or, whether you'll use it often enough to actually justify the expense.

It's certainly tempting to buy all of the new-fangled gardening gadgets that you see advertised in the catalogues or at the garden center, and the advertisers will certainly do their best to convince you that you really can't possibly do without their super-deluxe widget. But, just hold it. You've been managing perfectly well without this watchamacallit device for a long time, haven't you? You've probably already developed your very own tested way of doing whatever this thing promises to do.

Now, that's not to say that this wonder gardening device wouldn't make your life easier or shorten the time it takes to carry out that essential gardening task. But, hey, this gardening lark isn't exactly a race is it? You're doing it because you love it, aren't you? It relaxes you and enables you to forget the other stressful aspects of your life for a few hours, so who cares if this particular task done your very own patented way takes ten minutes longer to accomplish than it would with wonder-widget?

Be honest with yourself, if you spend all that cash on this ultra-modern gardening device, aren't you just going to go back to doing that task your own old way in double-quick time? And that expensive gardening device will just end up as the star item in your next garage sale.

With all that said, it's certainly true that some gardening jobs are definitely easier with the right tool. If you have some disability it is also sensible to get hold of some specially-adapted gardening equipment to ensure that your gardening hobby doesn't aggravate your disability.

Just be sensible and spend some time thinking about what you really need rather than emptying your wallet on something that some clever advertiser has convinced you that you need. That way your garden shed won't end up being some kind of garden implement museum, full to bursting with shiny equipment that never get to justify their existence with some honest work.

Mike Batey
http://mjbmarketing.info/gardening/

click here for The Most Trusted Name in Home Income