The Truth About Fruit! Health Food or Candy? Nutrition

How can you survive a drought?

If you’re a gardener that has an unlimited supply of water, consider yourself lucky. There are many of us who live in drought zones where the garden and lawn watering rules are very constrictive to the healthy growth of gardens and plants. Many people just give up when they find out how few gallons of water they are permitted to use, but some of us have just found ways to cope with less water. There are many ways to optimize ones garden to conserve water while still keeping it lush.

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Some of the ways include drip irrigation (the use of a pipe or hose with small holes to gradually seep into the roots of the plant), the placement of plants in groups of equal watering needs (to prevent wasting water on plants that don’t need it), and using compost or mulch to insulate the water and prevent drainage.


But one of the best ways to keep your garden alive during a drought is to take preventative measures. Occasionally a drought will be predicted far in advanced, or those already experiencing a drought will be given a few weeks of heavy rain. When this occurs, you should take the opportunity to set up several rain barrels. Many people think this would be a time consuming, silly thing to do. But it can save you many gallons of water, and hardly requires any work.

Finding the barrels will probably be the hardest part. You can use your own garbage cans, or head to your home improvement store to get a few 55 gallon plastic drums. These can be expensive and difficult to transport, so keep that in mind before you go to the store. You will probably want to cover the top of the barrel with a screen of some sort to filter out any unwanted leaves or debris that might fall off the roof of your house.

Once you have your barrels ready, you’re faced with the decision of where to place them. Usually during rainfall, there is one corner or segment of the house that rain tends to pour off of. If you are taking the simple approach to barrel placement, just place the barrel under all the places where you see large amounts of drips. However, while this might be the easiest way to place them, you won’t see very high volumes of rain in the barrels.



If you want to take a more complicated approach to placing the barrels, you should consider tweaking your gutter system a bit. If you remove each individual segment and place it at a very slight slant so that all the water is diverted to the nearest corner of the house, you can place a rain
barrel at each corner. So essentially your entire house acts as a catcher for the rain, instead of just a few feet worth of shingles. This is how to maximize the amount of water your rain barrel will catch.


After a heavy rainfall, each individual barrel probably won’t see very much rain. If it looks like it won’t be raining more any time soon, it’s a good idea to empty each barrel into one main central barrel. Seal it and save it out of the way, for whenever you may need it. Then the next time it starts to rain, you’ll be able to quickly put all your catching barrels into place without having to lug around all the water you’ve accumulated so far.

The use of water barrels might sound like an antiquated idea. However, when you’re in the midst of a drought and you’re able to spare that extra couple of gallons for your garden in addition the city allotment, you’ll be grateful for every bit of time and money you spent on collecting all that rain. All it takes is a few trips out in the backyard every time it starts to sprinkle, and you’ll be a very happy gardener when water isn’t so abundant.

Fountain of Youth and your Healing garden

A great way to spice up your garden is to add a water feature. These can be both soothing and aesthetically appealing. I've found that there’s nothing more relaxing than sitting on a bench next to my garden and listening to my fountain while I read a good book or do some studying. Putting in a water feature is fairly easy and relatively inexpensive, and will add immensely to the pleasantness of your garden. Also, the maintenance level is minimal.

Usually, people install fountains for the benefit of the natural ambiance it provides. For some reason, being around a gorgeous scene of water gives you a positive energy. This is also good if you practice Tai Chi or some form of yoga or meditation. The constant drone of the water is exactly what most people need to concentrate on what they are doing. Even if you're not into that kind of stuff, just being in a garden with a fountain has a sort of meditative quality to it, even if you're not trying to do so. I recommend it to anyone.


When you first decide to put in a fountain, you need to put great care into picking out one that will go well with the rest of your garden. If you have any other decorations, you want to consider if it goes well with your motif. Does the fountain you're considering stand out in your garden like a sore thumb, or does it look like it was meant to be there? If you're like me, you can't naturally tell whether the fountain will be a good addition to your garden just by looking at it. So my solution was to bring my sister (a natural at fashion design and that kind of stuff) along with a picture of my garden to the store. I was able to get her expert opinion, as well as see for myself what it would look like. By doing this I was able to pick a beautiful rock fountain that goes marvelously with the rest of my garden.



However, I still had a slight problem with supplying my fountain with power. You see, my garden isn't very close to my house. I thought it would look pretty tacky to run an extension cord across my yard, so I had to come up with another solution. I discussed my situation with a Home Depot employee, and he quickly found me the exact solution I needed: an extension cord meant for being buried! All it took was a few hours of digging a small trench across my yard, and I had power to my fountain without an unsightly cord running across my yard. After I got over this little hitch, my fountain plan went beautifully.

So if you're looking for a way to make your garden a more classy and beautiful place to be, I hope you consider installing a fountain. The whole process is surprisingly inexpensive, and I think that you will be very happy with the results. Having a fountain in your garden is not only soothing, but it also adds a lot of character to an otherwise bland garden. Remember, gardens are not just for giving us vegetables! A garden is a place to go when you want to retreat from the outside world and dwell in your own thoughts with no disturbance.

Feel better today. Stay healthy for tomorrow

While gardening is usually thought of as a productive way to grow beautiful plants and obtain tasty fruits and vegetables, few gardeners have ever considered the immense amounts of exercise one can get in the process of gardening. While you can get almost as much muscle (if not more) exercise as you do working out, it is very productive at the same time.


You may wonder how gardening could possibly give as much exercise as working out. Just think about all the various facets of preparing a garden. There are holes to be dug, bags and pots to be carried, and weeds to be pulled. Doing all of these things help to work out almost every group of muscles in your body.


My brother is a fanatic about working out. Almost every time I call his house, I end up interrupting some muscle toning activity. I’ve never really enjoyed working out, though, as it seems that the constant lifting of heavy things just puts a strain on my body with no immediate positive results. But while he is into working out, I am almost equally enthusiastic about gardening. I work outside improving my garden almost every day. I think I definitely surprised my brother when he realized that I am almost as muscular as he is; but I have never lifted a single dumbbell!

Before you go out into your garden, you should always stretch out. Even if your goal isn’t to work out and get exercise, it’s still a good idea. Often gardeners spend long periods of time hunched over or bent over. This can be bad for your back. So not only should you stretch out before hand, but you should always take frequent breaks if you’re spending long amounts of time in these positions.


Weeding and pruning are some of the best workouts a gardener can get. With the constant crouching and standing, the legs get a great workout. If your weeds are particularly resistant, your arms will become particularly toned just from the effort required to remove them from the ground. If you plan on taking the whole workout think very seriously, you should always be switching arms and positions to spread out the work between different areas of your body.


One of the most obvious ways to get exercise is in the transporting and lifting of bags and pots. Between the nursery and your house, you will have to move the bags multiple times (to the checkout, to your car, to your garden, and then spreading them out accordingly). As long as you remember to lift with your legs and not your back, transporting bags and pots can give you a fairly big workout, even though you probably don’t make those purchases very often.


Mowing your grass can also be a great exercise. If you’ve got an older mower that isn’t self propelled, just the act of pushing it through the grass will give you more of a workout than going to the gym for a few hours. During the course of mowing the grass, you use your chest, arms, back, and shoulder to keep the mower ahead of you. Your thighs and butt also get worked a lot to propel the mower. Not only do you get an all around muscle work out, but it can improve your heart’s health. It’s good for you as a cardiovascular activity, as well as a great way to lose weight due to the increased heart rate and heavy breathing.


If you plan on using gardening as a way to get in shape or lose some weight, you can hardly go wrong. Just be sure to stretch out, drink plenty of water, and apply sunscreen. As long as you take steps to prevent the few negative effects such as pulled muscles, dehydration and sunburn, I think you’ll have a great time and end up being a healthier person because of it.

What do you want to grow in your garden ?

I don’t know what it is about a garden that has always drawn humans to them. But they’ve always been very popular, and an integral part of peoples’ lifestyles. Most religions feature gardens as the settings for some of the biggest events According to Christianity, humanity was started in a garden and the son of God was resurrected in a garden. The Buddhist build gardens to allow nature to permeate their surroundings. Almost every major palace and government building has a garden. But what’s so great
about them? They’re just a bunch of plants, after all.


Of course, the reasoning is fairly obvious behind why people grow food in gardens. It’s to eat! If you live off the fat of the land and actually survive on stuff from your garden, it’s easy to understand the reasoning. But I’m thinking about those people who plant flower,fruit gardens just for the sake of looking nice. There’s no immediate benefit that I can see; you just have a bunch of flowers in your yard! However, after thinking
extensively about the motivation behind planting decorative gardens, I’ve conceived several possible theories.


I think one of the reasons people love gardens so much is that while we have a natural desire to progress and industrialize, deep within all of us is a primal love for nature. While this desire might not be as strong as the desire for modernism, it is still strong enough to compel us to create gardens, small outlets of nature, in the midst of all our hustle and bustle. Since being in nature is like regressing to an earlier stage of humanity, we too can regress to a time of comfort and utter happiness. This is why gardens are so relaxing and calming to be in. This is why gardens are a good place to meditate and do tai chi exercises. A garden is a way to quickly escape from the busy world.



I’ve thought at times that perhaps we as humans feel a sort of guilt driving us to restore nature and care for it. This guilt could stem from the knowledge that we, not personally but as a race, have destroyed so much of nature to get where we are today. It’s the least we can do to build a small garden in remembrance of all the trees we kill every day. It’s my theory that this is the underlying reason for most people to take up gardening as a hobby.


Gardening is definitely a healthy habit though, don’t get me wrong. Any hobby that provides physical exercise, helps the environment, and improves your diet can’t be a negative thing. So no matter what the underlying psychological cause for gardening is, I think that everyone should
continue to do so. In the USA especially, which is dealing with obesity and pollution as its two major problems, I think gardening can only serve to improve the state of the world.


Of course I’m no psychologist; I’m just a curious gardener. I often stay up for hours wondering what makes me garden. What is it that makes me go outside for a few hours every day with my gardening tools, and facilitate the small-time growth of plants that would grow naturally on their own? I may never know, but in this case ignorance truly is bliss.

Pelted by the horror of hail

One of the most hazardous things that can happen to your plants is weather. Many a garden has been demolished overnight because of this phenomenon. And seemingly, there is nothing we can do to prevent it. Of course, if weather didn’t exist at all then we wouldn’t have those nice sunny days that are beneficial to the growth of our plants. But then again, we wouldn’t have the tragic hailstorms that tear down everything we’ve worked for so many hours to grow.


When rain starts to fall, usually the first reaction in a gardener is pure joy. After all, this means you don’t have to worry about going out and watering it manually. The natural rain fall can’t be anything but good for all your thirsty plants, can it? Well once that same gardener starts to see the gorgeous rain drops turn into small globules of ice, usually a complete emotional breakdown is in order. I know this from experience, because when I was a blooming gardener I had my garden completely demolished by about 10 minutes of severe hail.


When I first learned my lesson on the damage hail can do, I quickly devised a method of coping. I began to keep large clay pots within 10 feet of my garden, so that at any sign of hail I could run outside and have the plants sheltered in a matter of seconds. This saved me from being forced to watch my plants be ripped to pieces on multiple occasions. I’ve never dealt with hail more than an inch in diameter, but I’m guessing that if there had been any baseball sized chunks then those pots would have been
quickly demolished.

However, as the number of fragile plants in my garden grew, it became slightly impractical to have a pot for each plant, and run outside to place each one before significant damage had already occurred. After much thought, I ended up building a horizontal, retractable screen mechanism made out of a strong but flexible wire mesh. At any sign of rain I could pull the screen out over my entire garden and have instant protection. Not only did it let the rain through, but the collected hail provided a steady
drip of water for as much as a day afterwards. This project cost me several hundred dollars, and more blood, sweat, and tears than can be measured with earth dollars. Therefore I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

If it’s too late for you, and you’ve recently lost your precious plants to those wicked balls of ice, then you’re probably looking for some way to help the plants recover. Unfortunately there aren’t many choices for you. The best thing you can do is give them the tender care they deserve, and
attempt to nurse them back to health over a long period of time. The several weeks after being severely damaged by hail are vital to whether the plant survives or not. If you expect more rain or wind, you should keep the plant covered. In this brittle stage, even raindrops or a strong breeze could cause more damage.

So if you live in an area that experiences frequent hail, you should definitely have some emergency plan for protecting your plants. Sitting by and watching them be ripped to shreds should never be an option!

The Spice Lover's Guide to Herbs and Spices

Herb garden, originally uploaded by lovestitches.

If you’re not the type of person that wants to spend their time managing an elaborate fruit or vegetable garden, you might consider planting and maintaining an herb garden. While the product might not seem as significant, you’ll still enjoy the constant availability of fresh, delicious herbs to flavor your meals with.

First you’ll want to choose the herbs that you’ll plant. You might have a hard time doing this because of the huge scope of herbs available. But the best way to choose is to do what I did; just look at what you have in your kitchen. By planting your own collection of these herbs, you can save money on buying them from the grocery store while having the added benefit of freshness. Some of the herbs you might start with include rosemary, sage, basil, dill, mint, chives, and parsley among others.

When choosing an area to put your herb garden, you should remember that the soil should have extremely good drainage. If the dirt gets watered and stays completely saturated, you have no chance of ever growing a healthy plant. One of the best ways to fix the drainage problem is to dig a foot deep in the soil, and put a layer of crushed rocks down before replacing all the soil. This will allow all that water to escape, thus saving your plants.

When you are ready to begin planting herbs, you might be tempted to buy the more expensive plants from the store. However, with herbs it is much easier to grow them from seed than it is with other plants. Therefore you can save a bundle of money by sticking with seed packets. Some herbs grow at a dangerously fast rate. For example, if you plant a mint plant in an open space then it will take over your entire garden in a matter of days. The best way to prevent this problem is to plant the more aggressive plants in pots (with holes in the bottom to allow drainage, of course).

When it comes time to harvest the herbs you have labored so hard over, it can be fatal to your plant to take off too much. If your plant isn’t well established, it isn’t healthy to take any leaves at all, even if it looks like its not using them. You should wait until your plant has been well established for at least several months before taking off any leaves. This wait will definitely be worth it, because by growing unabated your plant will produce healthily for years to come.

Once you’ve harvested your delicious home grown herbs, you’ll want to use them in cooking. Why else would you have grown them? Well first the process begins with drying them out. This is easily achieved by placing them on a cookie sheet and baking them 170 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 to 4 hours. After they’re sufficiently dried to be used in cooking, you can consult the nearest cookbook for instructions on using them to effectively flavor a dish.

If you want to store your herbs for later usage, you should keep them in a plastic or glass container. Paper or cardboard will not work, because it will absorb the taste of the herbs. During the first few days of storage, you should regularly check the container and see if any moisture has accumulated. If it has, you must remove all the herbs and re-dry them. If moisture is left from the first drying process, it will encourage mildew while you store your herbs. Nobody likes mildew.

So if you enjoy herbs or gardening, or both, then you should probably consider setting up an herb garden. It might require a little bit of work at first to set it up for optimal drainage, and pick what herbs you want to grow. But after the initial hassle, it’s just a matter of harvesting and drying all your favorite herbs.