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Four Lights Tiny House Company. Pest Control. Italian Food Forever - Italian Recipes! Raised Bed Gardening How To Guide. For space efficiency and high yields, it’s hard to beat a vegetable garden grown in raised beds.

Raised Bed Gardening How To Guide

Raised beds can improve production as well as save space, time, and money. They also are the perfect solution for dealing with difficult soils such as heavy clay. In addition, raised beds improve your garden’s appearance and accessibility. Raised gardening beds are higher than ground level, and consist of soil that’s mounded or surrounded by a frame to keep it in place. The beds are separated by paths. One reason raised beds are so effective for increasing efficiency and yields is that crops produce better because the soil in the beds is deep, loose, and fertile. Raised beds also save time and money because you need only dig, fertilize, and water the beds, not the paths. How to Make a Square Foot Garden. I’d like to introduce you to a new way of gardening.

How to Make a Square Foot Garden

It’s called square foot gardening. I planted my first square foot garden last year and I’m hooked. Here’s the basic gist: Most gardens are planted in long rows separated by three foot aisles. This means 80% of your garden (that you water, weed, and fertilize) grows nothing. Using the square foot gardening method, you divide a 4′ x 4′ box into sixteen 1 foot square gardens. . #1. It doesn’t matter what kind of soil you have, because you won’t be using it. Peat MossCompostVermiculite Just mix these three ingredients in equal proportions and you have the finest soil you could imagine. . #2. Yup, that’s right. . #3. Your square foot garden takes up only 20% of the space required by a traditional garden.

Square Foot Garden Plant Spacing Guides. Now that you have your boxes built and the grids put on, it’s quite easy to visualise the plants growing in it.

Square Foot Garden Plant Spacing Guides

Maybe you’ve decided to have a trellis along the back or on the end of the box for your vine plants to grow vertically. A good idea is to have your vines at the back (or on one end), bigger and bushier plants in the middle and the smaller leaf and root plants in the front so that you don’t have to battle to reach through a big bushy plant to tend to and harvest your middle squares. You can also alternate your vegetable squares with a few companion flower squares to keep the bugs away and to add a bit of colour to your Square Foot Garden box. Marigolds and Nasturtiums make good companion plants and the Nasturtium flowers can also be used to spruce up a salad. Plant Spacing You will see on the back of all seed packets, a spacing guide which usually indicates a recommended ‘Thin To‘ or ‘Final Spacing‘ measurement.

Plant Sizes Dividing the Squares & Sowing the Seed. Ten Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make (and How to Avoid Them!) So you're thinking of herb gardening, or maybe you tried it last year and it was an utter disaster?

Ten Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make (and How to Avoid Them!)

Have no fear. There are a few simple mistakes that many herb newbies make (and I know, because I made most of 'em myself). Master these simple and practical tips for herb gardening and you'll be using your own fresh herbs like Mario Batali in no time. Fresh herbs are one of the greatest ways to increase the taste of your food healthfully. I often toss whatever leafy herbs are hand liberally into a salad to add unexpected variations in flavor (basil, oregano and dill are all great choices). Let it be known that I have the blackest of thumbs. It surprises me how often I bump into friends who are flummoxed about some aspect of herb gardening. Mistake 1: Growing from seed. Mistake 4: Not cutting early and often. Mistake 5: Taking the leaves from the wrong place. 50 Slow Cooker Recipes. Life is busy around my house.

50 Slow Cooker Recipes

Even though I have young kids, we are working on potty training, sharing, walking and just staying safe :) Toddlers are such a crazy and fun age! School is back in session, or almost back in session, and I am sure life is or will get busy taking kids to school, sporting events, extracurricular activities and pretty much anything that comes with the hustle and bustle of life. My mom was/is a huge fan of just throwing something in the crock pot in the morning and not having to worry about dinner the rest of the day. Thankfully, she has passed down that love to me! I adore my slow cooker! Crock Pot Honey Sesame Chicken Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Pork Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Cafe Rio Chicken Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan Slow Cooker Chile Colorado. Natural Herbs Guide. Vinegar Clinically Proven To Destroy Fat Without Diet Change - Technorati Lifestyle. Some exciting research on vinegar proves that it really does reduce body fat levels, triglycerides and sugar in humans.

Vinegar Clinically Proven To Destroy Fat Without Diet Change - Technorati Lifestyle

I will outline the exact doses you need to achieve these beneficial effects, and when to use it to achieve them. Fat and Sugar Busting Effects in Mice AND Humans If you’ve ever had a high carbohydrate meal, or worse, one that was also high-glycemic, you already know that these sugars will convert to fat. If you use vinegar after a high-glycemic meal, your glucose levels will not rise, according to new research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study examined the effects of a high-glycemic meal with and without vinegar on diabetic humans. Another study, but on mice who were on high fat diets, also shows that acetic acid, the active component in vinegar, enhances fatty acid oxidation and thermogenic proteins such as UCP-2, and prevents body fat accumulation.