Raised beds vs. traditional gardens

Raised bed gardening continues to gain traction among gardening aficionados due to a number of benefits that the method possesses compared with traditional in-ground gardening. An article in Natural Living Ideas lists down a slew of important benefits that both amateur and professional gardeners may gain using the raised bed method.

According to the article, raised bed gardening provides better drainage than traditional gardening. The loose texture of soils used in raised bed gardens seeps water, thereby preventing the essential top soil from being eroded. Raised beds also tend to retain soil moisture more effectively than traditional in-ground gardening. This prevents the soil from drying out and subsequently provides enough water for the plans.

In the same manner, the elevated soil allows excess water to be quickly drained from the bed. This makes raised bed gardens popular among tropical areas with heavy rainfall.

Raised bed gardens also provide better aeration for the plants. The loose soil used in raised bed gardens allow better air circulation in the roots. Loose soil also allow air pockets of nitrogen to be converted into essential minerals. The loose soil in raised beds also allow plant roots to spread in every direction, giving them greater access to water and essential minerals in the soil. A well-developed root system helps the plants to yield more produce.

The soil texture in traditional gardens tend to go compacted over time. In contrast, the elevation that raised beds provide discourage animals and humans from casually stepping on the ground, thereby preventing soil compaction.

Compared with traditional in-ground gardening, raised bed provide better opportunities for weed control. Raised beds encounter fewer weeds due to their elevation. The loose soil in raised beds also allow gardeners to easily pull out weeds that sprout from time to time. Raised beds also require plants to be planted right next to each other, which instantly suffocates weeds. (RELATED: Find more news about homesteading and off-grid living at Homesteading.news.)

Pests are also easier to control in raised beds than traditional gardens. Pests normally access plant patches by crawling on the ground. The elevation that raised beds provide, as well as the framing that surrounds it, deters pests from attacking the plants.  Placing a wire netting at the base of raised bed gardens may also discourage burrowing animals from running into the plants.

Raised bed gardens also gives gardeners a significantly better yield compared with traditional gardening. Intensive culture, good soil aeration and better root run contribute to this result. Unlike traditional in-ground gardening, raised beds also facilitate faster thawing during spring. This enables gardeners to plant their seedlings earlier. Raised beds may also help extend the plant’s growing season through the use of additional implements such as hoop covers.

In addition, raised bed gardens provide gardeners with great portability. Beds that are not getting enough sunlight, for example, can be easily dragged to another location. The framing can also be easily dismantled, while the contents such as soil and plants can be easily transferred. In addition, raised beds can be practically placed on existing patch or ground. This makes raised beds a convenient method as there is no need to dig up the patch and clear the sods. Traditional in-ground gardening does not provide the same benefit.

Sources: 

NaturalLivingIdeas.com

OffTheGridNews.com

As noted at HealthNutNews, back in 2012 a husband and wife, both of whom worked for the CIA as analysts, had their home and their privacy vandalized, essentially, by a local Kansas SWAT team. For two hours militarized cops kept the family at bay while searching their premises, even though after a few minutes the team knew it wasn’t going to find what it came for – marijuana.

You see, some months before, Robert and Addie Harte took their son to a local gardening store to help him with a school project – growing hydroponic tomatoes. The day they were there to buy their supplies, a state trooper just happened to be in the parking lot collecting license plate numbers of all shoppers at the gardening store. For some reason the state had decided to collect plate numbers and then distribute them to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation.

The Harte’s did nothing more than drive to the store, park and buy some gardening equipment – but that was all it took to make them the targets of a criminal probe.

Some eighteen months later, the family was investigated as part of “Operation Constant Gardener” by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department; deputies were even tasked with going through the Harte’s trash. Repeatedly finding what they later described as wet plant material – which officers assumed was marijuana – field tests were done and, somehow, they indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in pot, and the department used that test and the trip to the gardening store as “evidence,” convincing a judge to then issue a search warrant, which led to the raid.

As further reported by HealthNutNews:

They would find nothing and lab tests would reveal that the plant material was loose-leaf tea (which Addie Harte drank on a regular basis) but the damage was done and the family harassed needlessly. So, the important question then becomes, why did the field tests come up positive for marijuana?  Well, it seems it happens a lot. Like whenever the police [want] it to.

Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” wrote in a December 2015 story for The Washington Post that such tests are often wrong. In fact, he noted that the lab test on the plant material not only wasn’t pot, but that it did “not look anything like marijuana leaves or stems.”

And, in 2009, Balko noted, the Marijuana Policy Project conducted studies on typical testing kits used by police to test for drugs; the organization found that “a surprisingly large number of common substances generated false positive results for the presence of drugs.”

Balko writes: “It’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to.”

Continuing, he noted:

A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.

“While testing the specificity of the KN Reagent test kits with 42 non-marijuana substances, I observed that 70 percent of these tests rendered a false positive,” said Dr. Omar Bagasra, director of the Center for Biotechnology, who conducted the experiments for the policy center.

“Law enforcement officials, forensic drug analysts, and prosecutors knowingly employ the flawed Duquenois-Levine and KN Reagent tests as well as mere conclusory police reports to wrongfully prosecute and convict millions of individuals for anti-marijuana law violations,” wrote forensics expert John Kelly, in collaboration with former FBI chief scientist and narcotics officer Dr. Frederick Whitehurst in a report [PDF] they jointly produced, “False Positives Equal False Justice.”

As for the Harte’s, it took months and $25,000 to find out why they had been raided. Once they did, they filed a lawsuit – though recently a federal judge dismissed their lawsuit claims, saying that “sending a SWAT team into a home first thing in the morning based on no more than a positive field test and spotting a suspect at a gardening store was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment,” Balko wrote.

Sources:

HealthNutNews

WashingtonPost

Way before GMOs and corporate industrial agriculture, we were a nation built on farming and agriculture

In 1790, 90% of Americans were farmers. By 2002, that percentage had dropped to 1.9. In between, there was a golden age for those who made their income from the land as well as fledging back yard gardeners. Seed banks, county agricultural offices and land grants were created to assist all who wanted to grow food, flowers or animals and increase the productivity of each. Those days are now long gone. In fact, at the same time when organic agriculture, farmer’s markets and small family farms are flourishing in efforts to provide the nutritious, wholesome food families want, the government is cracking down on the inalienable right to feed one’s family. The tiny town of Sugarcreek, Missouri, according to Natural News, has now banned all “food vegetation . . . within thirty feet of a city street.” Before the ordinance was passed, homeowner Nathan Athans also paid fines in order to keep his burgeoning vegetable garden. Seems his neighbors didn’t care for rich black soil sprouting life.

Director Kristen Canty documented the current war on farmers in Farmageddon

The 2011 documentary Farmageddon is a terrifying look at the brutal tactics being used against farmers, raw food cooperatives and animal husbandry operations in America. Imagine being told your healthy flock of imported lambs is infected with a horrific disease – which isn’t proven – and they must be destroyed. Or a SWAT team rifling its way into the home of family, including young children, who run a small rural coop in Ohio? Or pouring out fifty gallons of rich raw milk cause a county official told you to?

Food is indeed a weapon. And we are in a war.

The Animal and Plant Inspection Service (APHIS) is under the aegis of the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA.) As reported on page seventeen in The Militarization of America, Aphis spent $4.77 million on shotguns, liquid explosives, drones, .308 caliber rifles, night vision goggles, military canons and more between 2006 – 2014. The USDA is also investing in infrastructure across rural America under the guise of “helping farmers.” Are they positioning themselves for a food grab?  Were those folks in Farmageddon just target practice?

 Be a revolutionary. Plant a seed. Watch it grow. Eat clean food.

The fight for small farms continues in parts of Michigan, but at the same time, Detroit, Boston, Austin, New York, Seattle and other cities are investing in urban agriculture. During World War II, the government actually encouraged backyard gardens. It was considered “good citizenship.” Today, Wakingtimes.com describes growing your own as “propaganda gardening, a combination of guerilla gardening and political protest.” Bring your pitchfork and your shovel!

Sources:

JasperBecker.com

HistoryPlace.com

AgclassRoom.org

NaturalNews.com

FarmAgedDonMovie.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

Vimeo.com

OpenTheBooks.com

Usda.gov

NaturalNews.com

Inhabitat.com

Archives.library.illinois.edu

WakingTimes.com

YouTube.com

(Photo credit: Library.illinois.edu)

Just like with most new ideas, at first the idea is novel and a small group of people embrace it while others look on thinking they’re crazy; however, there comes a tipping point when enough people recognize that the crazy idea is actually the leading edge of genius and all of a sudden, everyone’s doing it. That’s what’s happening with the idea of growing food vertically, taking advantage of the uncharted sky and reducing your garden’s footprint.

Soil or water medium?

Essentially, there are two types of vertical gardens — those that grow in soil and those that grow in water. Water-based growing mediums are either aquaponic or hydroponic. Hydroponics is a method of growing vegetables and other plants in water without soil and nourished with a mineral nutrient. Aquaponics is a growing system combining the raising of aquatic animals such as fish with hydroponic gardening, where plants are cultivated in a water medium all in the same tank. The symbiotic relationship between the plants and animals produces a vital growing medium and a sustainable food production system. Both systems provide organic or non-organic growing environments for vegetables.

Reasons to grow vertically

So, why would you want to take advantage of growing a garden vertically, instead of in a traditional garden plot? There are lots of reasons.

1. Old souls love to putter in the garden, but the oldest of souls usually complain about their backs and knees hurting. Vertical gardening enables you to grow veggies without ever bending or getting on your knees again. Grow vertically in plant pockets, hanging planters, stacking containers, recycled pallets, in stacked flower boxes, table garden systems, plant trees, in greenhouses on tables and up-cycled ladders. If you can imagine it, you can grow it.

2. Save space with a vertical garden, especially if you have no land or a very small yard. Grow up the side of your fence, on a wall, the deck, your balcony, in a green house or even inside in the garage.

3. Some vertical garden systems are portable and can be moved from outside to indoors on wheeled apparatus.

4. Grow inside during colder month, using a grow light.

5. Community gardens are easy to set up, even in small, indoor spaces.

6. There’s much less work and time involved when preparing vertical gardens — no tilling, no digging.

7. Use less water because in many vertical gardens, water is recycled through the planting system.

8. You’re dog won’t dig up your garden, and neither will rabbits or deer.

9. It’s an easier way to protect your plants from soil-borne pests.

10. Companion gardening is easy and even more advantageous when you can move planters around to take advantage of beneficial conditions.

11. Using no soil means no weeds or fewer weeds in less soil.

12. Increase vegetable yield. Relocate plants to better take advantage of light and air circulation.

13. My favorite reason for being a fan of vertical gardening is to avoid the prying eyes of municipal authorities — those people forcing others to dig up gardens and destroy their food supply. Vertical gardening allows you to grow food in less obvious places, even under grow lights, out of site of the food police.

Just remember, it’s never too soon to plan your new vertical garden project.

By JB Bardot, Natural News.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.motherearthnews.com
http://www.instructables.com/id/Vertical-Garden-1/
http://www.countryliving.com/outdoor/how-to-plant-a-vertical-garden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics
http://www.vegetablegardener.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wall

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• 7 Piece Natural Home Cleaning Kit For Under $10 With Recipes

Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Get caught up on ALL of the day’s most important news and information here.

Origins

The origins of no-till gardening are sometimes ascribed to the Australian conservationist, Esther Deans, who fashioned a method of gardening which involved placing newspaper or cardboard over a patch of grass or weeds. When mulch (rotting organic matter, such as vegetable peelings) was placed atop the layer, natural soil-making conditions were produced. However, the Japanese microbiologist Masanobu Fukuoka has also been labeled the ‘parent’ of no-till gardening, since his book, The One-Straw Revolution, advocated a method of soil building that was divorced from machines and chemicals. In the United States, gardener Ruth Stout is often considered the originator of no-till gardening. She advocated a method of gardening that involved layers of compost on top of an initial layer of card or newspaper, which eventually decomposes and provides fertile growing conditions for plants.

Creating a garden using the no-till method

If you’d like to create a garden using the no-till method, follow these steps:

1.) After you’ve selected where you want your garden to be, remove any obtrusive shrubs or weeds from the area. This isn’t essential with small weeds, since they’ll be suffocated by the first layer you add anyway, but if you have any large flora in that area, it might be best to remove them to ensure a reasonably flat space.

2.) Add a layer of cardboard or newspapers on top of your selected space and water it. Then add a layer of mulch (such as grass cuttings, straw, vegetable scraps, leaves, paper, wood scraps, or a combination of several) on top of the damp cardboard or newspaper layer. These two initial layers will encourage the right conditions for fertile soil, and they will also attract earthworms to the area.

3.) After these two first layers are added, you can continue to add more layers of mulch to the existing layers. According to the lasagna method, it’s a good idea to alternate between layers of browns (such as peat and shredded newspaper) and greens (such as grass and vegetable peels).

4.) Once your layers of mulch have reached a height of approximately two feet, you can cease adding new layers and wait until everything composts. You might be surprised at how quickly this happens. Once the layers have ‘flattened’ through composting, your no-till garden is ready. This process will have created excellent soil quality for growing plants. Since it is common for the first layer (the cardboard or newspaper layer) to still exist after the compost is finished, you may need to cut circular holes in it before you can plant seeds or plants in the soft, fluffy soil below it.

And that’s basically the no-till process. You can create a garden using this method any time of the year, and almost all fruits and vegetables will grow in it. Many gardeners like to plant heirloom tomatoes and other unique hybrids in these gardens, since the fertile, mineral-rich soil tends to enhance their unique aesthetic and nutritional qualities.

By Michael Ravensthorpe, Natural News.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/no-till-gardening
http://eartheasy.com/blog/2009/01/no-till-gardening/
http://notillgardening.com/
http://www.onestrawrevolution.net

More:

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Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Get caught up on ALL of the day’s most important news and information here.

That’s because exposure to the naturally occurring microbes in our outdoor environment helps program the developing immune system to learn what types of foreign agents are actually harmless. This prevents it from later attacking innocuous allergens, or even your own body.

“You want your immune system to have a large repertoire of harmless organisms that it has learned not to attack,” said medical microbiologist Graham Rook of University College London. “If you have this, then, because all lifeforms are ultimately built from the same building blocks, you are equipped to recognise almost anything that comes along and mount an appropriate immune response,” he continued, as reported by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

More dirt = healthier immune system

The idea that exposure to microbes helps program the immune system goes back to 1989, when epidemiologist Prof. David Strachan noted that rates of allergies were rising in Western countries, concurrent with a drop in infectious diseases. He had also found that children with more older siblings were less prone to allergies (and, scientists later discovered, to autoimmune diseases). He suggested that exposure to more childhood infections via older siblings helped “train” the developing immune system.

In the years since, scientists have discovered that the key factor is not actually childhood infection – understandably, since our hunter-gatherer ancestors rarely got many of the “herd” infections that large, urban populations now suffer from. Instead, the immune system is programmed by exposure to parasites and, most of all, harmless microbes that surround us.

For example, studies have found that children who are exposed to farms and cowsheds early in life – or whose mothers are exposed during pregnancy – are less likely to develop allergies and asthma later in life. Another study found that children born in homes with cat and mouse dander and cockroach droppings were less likely to suffer from wheezing by age three, and that children in homes with more bacteria had fewer allergies.

Research also suggests that no household – or even urban – environment can be as good for our immune systems as good, old-fashioned dirt, whether from the garden, a farm or the wilderness. For example, a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found less diverse microbial flora on the skin of city dwellers than people living in rural areas. The researchers attributed this to less exposure to dirt and animals. This reduced diversity was linked to higher risk of allergies.

Get out and garden!

So how can we build healthy immune systems in our children – and perhaps even re-balance our own, out-of-whack immune systems? Spend time outside! Children and adults should work and relax outside, doing activities from gardening, to hiking, to raising backyard chickens.

“Our outdoor environment is teeming with microbes, most of which are harmless, on every surface,” said microbiologist Sally Bloomfield of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “They are also airborne so we inhale them constantly while we are outdoors.”

Eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, also helps build up your gut flora, as these foods are more likely to maintain higher levels of outdoor microbes. Of course, purchasing from a local farmer’s market will give you the best benefit – or better yet, grow them in your own garden!

What about if you spent your entire childhood indoors? It turns out that getting outside and gardening is just as important for you. According to gut biologist William Parker of Duke University, people who weren’t exposed to enough outdoor microbes as children need to be extra careful to avoid vitamin D deficiency, lack of exercise, stress and poor diet. Gardening addresses all four of these factors!

“All of us have this loss of biodiversity that puts us at greater risk of inflammatory disease,” Parker said. “It means we really have to watch out for these other four factors, and guard against them.”

By David Gutierrez, Natural News.

More:

• Want Better Yields In The Garden? Look To The Heavens (Well, The Moon, Anyway)
• 10 Veggies You Can Grow From Scraps
• Backyard Bounty: Vegetables Are Nature’s Original Nutritional Powerhouses

Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Get caught up on ALL of the day’s most important news and information here.

Long-time gardeners have always know that putting plant and seed in the ground and then maintaining plants and crops as they grow is hard work. But chances are good that they weren’t aware of the health benefits of that work.

Medical researchers and doctors now say that a half an hour of digging, raking and pushing a lawn mower is just as good as going to a gym. Thirty minutes of digging burns 150 calories; raking burns 120 and pushing a mower burns 165, the UK’s Daily Mail reports.

Though a half-hour jog, on average, burns up to 240 calories, doctors are nonetheless attempting to encourage more people to take up lighter activities that can be woven into our daily lives – activities that also burn calories and boost fitness.

Because many people feel too intimidated by gyms and strenuous fitness exercise, experts are instead concentrating more on getting people to include more moderate activity and exercise daily that they are less likely to give up on over the long haul. Researchers are finding that moderate exercise like gardening and walking will also cut the risk of heart attack in half, adding as much as seven years to an average life span.

30 minutes a day is all that is required

“Gardening is great – it gets you outside, it helps build muscle and it burns calories,” Professor Naveed Sattar, an expert in metabolic medicine at Glasgow University, told the Daily Mail Online.

“The key thing is sustainability. The way to keep exercising is to something you love – such as gardening – or do something for a reason, such as walking or cycling to work,” he added.

Britain’s National Health Service recommends 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, which includes activities like walking and gardening, or 75 minutes of strenuous exercise like running or playing soccer. In the U.S., the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition recommends 60 minutes of physical activity daily for children ages 6–17, and at least 30 minutes daily for adults.

In Britain, however, the NHS says that four of five people fail to reach their daily physical activity target, which has played a major role in contributing to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes. The same is true in the U.S.

Toned forearms, thighs, behinds

The Daily Mail Online reported that the Royal Horticulture Society surveyed 2,000 people, asking about their experiences with the pastime. About 80 percent of respondents said that overall gardening definitely improved their fitness level, while 60 percent said they felt physically energized after gardening. In addition, 53 percent said their moods improved after a bout of gardening.

The society further noted that some 70 percent of respondents said gardening helped tone their forearms, while 52 percent said their thighs were toned, and about one-third said the activity toned their behinds. One-fifth of respondents said gardening was their primary form of exercise, which means that, for many people, it has had a major impact on them, health-wise (and there’s that food security angle, too).

“The evidence is that strenuous exercise gives you a bit more benefit, but not that much,” Sattar said. “And it comes at a cost, with a greater burden on the joints, and if you are moving from a sedentary lifestyle there is a risk of going straight in to strenuous exercise as there’s a strain on your heart.

“That’s why there’s a shift at the moment to focusing on light to moderate exercise, which can have a huge benefit and is easier to weave into your daily routine,” he added.

Reporting by J.D. Heyes, NaturalNews.com.

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Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Check out our daily headlines here.

Here are five amazing gardening tips and tricks that will really make spring planting a much more enjoyable and industrious experience:

Growing tomato seedlings from a tomato slice

Maybe you’ve heard that you can take a slice of a tomato and grow new seedlings from it – well, it’s true, and it is so easy you won’t believe it.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Some ripe tomatoes

Potting soil or garden mix

Small containers

A bit of time

How easy is this? Check out this short video:

Now, when your seedlings are ready to transplant, here’s another short video showing you how to do that [H/T Sojali]:

Recycled watering jug

Don’t throw out your empty milk or juice jugs – turn them into portable watering devices!

Find out how here. It’s very simple.

Eggshells

Don’t let those fresh chicken egg shells go to waste, either. One way to protect your plants from pests is to sprinkle crushed egg shells at their base:

Image: Bloglovin

Coffee grounds

Image: OrganicFarmBlog

If you’re not a K-cupper and still like to drink coffee  the old-fashioned way, then you for sure ought to be saving your old grounds because the make wonderful compost feed for your plants:

Coffee grounds make great garden fertilizer. Along with phosphorus and potassium, one of the main nutrient of a good fertilizer is nitrogen. As a processed seed, coffee grounds, can give out around 10% of nitrogen, making them a good source of natural nitrogen. This is how it works in plants… Nitrogen helps the plant in converting sunlight into energy. This energy is then transmitted throughout the plant via cells and root systems with the help of phosphorus. Potassium keeps the plant moist, which aids the process of photosynthesis and that is how plants produces their food.

Coffee grounds also work well as sheet mulch. The pH in coffee grounds is usually from mildly acid to mildly alkaline and the pH turns neutral as it decomposes. Applying a half inch thick of coffee grounds atop the regular organic mulch will make it easy for worms and other soil microbes in breaking it down.

Read the full article here.

Save your scraps!

You can grow so many foods from table scraps – think of the tomato above! And we’ve listed 10 foods you can use for that purpose – just click here!

More:

• These vegetables grow best in small spaces
• How to freeze your garden goodies so you can enjoy them all winter long
• Start your own orchard

Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network.