Organic Gardening Tips

Ready to start growing your own food via an organic garden? Do you know how to start growing a garden like that? If not, no worries, this article has your back. Below are some tips and tricks that can get you started with the basics of growing an organic garden.

Save those old or damaged Venetian blinds! The slats can be re-used make excellent markers for your organic garden. Cut the slats loose from the cords holding the blind together. Cut the slats at an angle (so that the end is pointed and easy to stick in the soil) with a small wood saw. You should cut about four inch lengths. Use a lead pencil or an indelible marker to write the name of the plants, and stick the marker in the ground!

If you find yourself battling annoying clumps of weeds, one solution is to use a concentrated spritz of water and vinegar to the most choked areas. Adjust the nozzle on the sprayer so that it is easier to target only the affected areas. This is most effective when used on a sunny day.

TIP! Embrace earthworms in the organic garden! Earthworms are an organic gardener's best friend. Through tunneling and their nitrogen-rich castings, they can help to aerate the soil.

For organic fertilizer to use around the plants in your garden and flower beds, start a compost bin made from all-organic material that would otherwise be wasted. Pitch in yard clippings, leaves, vegetable peelings, eggshells and coffee grounds, turning the contents of the bin often. In just a short time, you will have great material to mix with your soil that will provide nutrients and nourishment to your plants without added chemicals.

With the previous tips kept in mind, you ought to be ready to start growing your own organic food. It does take some research, hard work outside, and some patience, but if you keep at it, it is indeed possible to have a successful organic garden. So, get out there and grow!

Last Minute Christmas Gift Ideas

We are down to the wire now and your last few days of Christmas shopping are slowly going away. But you still have a list and of course they are the hardest people to buy for.

Here is a few suggestions for those hard to buy for people left on your list.

• Dinner and a movie (great for a single person, or friend you want to treat)
• Coupons for kids - 1 hour of game time with mom, get out of chores free etc...
• Bake a batch of someones favorite cookie and deliver it with a bow
• Donate to their charity in their honor
• Offer free babysitting cards - perfect for the new parents
• Host a game night complete with lots of goodies to eat and drink
• Give a gift to a favorite magazine
• Enroll and pay for a one year membership to the local farm co-op

If you get creative, you will find lots of gift ideas just around the corner. Gifts do not have to be big, expensive off the shelf items. We all have too much of that laying around our houses anyhow. Put a little thought into it and you'll be amazed at the response. Maybe you will even start a new tradition.

Green Ideas for Christmas

Going Green With Your Christmas Tree

What is that you say? Christmas Trees are green? Sure they are in color. But what is the best way to be "green" with your Christmas Tree? Some believe that having a fake Christmas tree is the greenest way to go. After all, you can reuse it year after year. These trees may be green for awhile and you may enjoy the easy clean up and freedom from watering, but after a few years these pvc green wanna-Be's end up in the landfill anyhow.

Well that is one strike already for those!

Let's look at fresh Christmas trees. From a lot, or from your local forest, some people can not stand the idea of cutting down a living tree. Let alone removing it from the forest. Truth is there are a few green ways to make this living tree a better choice. After the holidays, you can mulch the tree and place it around your garden beds. You could also cut up the wood and let it dry for summer camp outs. Trim the branches and use for slippery winter walkways or donate your tree to the local boy scout chapter and they will recycle it for you.
You get to enjoy a tree in your home for a few weeks, and you save maybe a larger tree from being cut down for the purpose of wood chips.

It's maybe not a strike, but still it's not the best option.

So what is the number one way to keep your Christmas Holiday Tree green?

Go to the local nursery and purchase a beautiful fir tree or whatever tree you would like to decorate. Sure it costs more, but many of us around the country pay just as much for a tree off a lot at Christmas time.
Take your living green Christmas tree home, and keep it indoors for a few weeks. Decorate it, enjoy it, water it! When Christmas is over take your living green tree outside and prepare it for planting in your back yard. Instant landscaping, and a beautiful tree that will grow and bring you many memories of Christmases past. Imagine the yard you will have in just 10 years. If you don't like the thought of spending your New Years Holiday digging a hole, donate this living tree to your local parks and recreation department. They will plant it and you will be bringing a beautiful tree to your town.

It really is the greenest way to celebrate this year.

Things to do with Coffee Grounds

Do you have too many coffee grounds? Want to get a free used coffee grounds from Starbucks but not sure what to do with them. Well, here we have a few cool and fun ideas that will stretch those precious coffee grounds and help you around the house too.

• Sprinkle around house plants
• Use coffee grounds like you would ant deterrent. Throw coffee grounds around the foundation of your home and keep ants from getting in. It is said ants won't cross them. Well....we still don't have ants.
• Mix coffee grounds with your favorite body wash to add a micro abrasion therapy for your skin.
• Place coffee grounds in all your garden beds to keep cats from using it as their personal liter box.
• Bathe your dog with coffee grounds and water. It is said to repel fleas.
• Add a bowl of used coffee grounds to your freezer or fridge. It will help absorb odors.
  
• Place used coffee grounds in cotton bags and keep in closets to absorb odors.
• It's always nice to keep some coffee grounds in the kitchen. Run through the garbage disposal or use on your hands after cutting onions.
• Coffee is a great hair rinse too!
  

The Toddy

I'm in love with my new coffee maker. It's a cold brew Toddy. I found mine on craigslist, so it was a bonus score.

If you haven't heard of the Toddy, it is a cold brew coffee system. You soak a pound of coffee in about a gallon of cold water for up to 12 hours. Filter through it's reusable filter pad, and you have a gallon of coffee concentrate. Just 2 ounces of coffee concentrate to 6 ounces of boiling water and you have a perfect cup.

Oh but there is more to this fabulous coffee. It is less acidic for those you have trouble with regular coffee. Because it uses a cold process no hot water touches the actual grounds releasing the bitter oils. Full flavor with out the oils.

According to the directions, you use the coffee once, and throw the grounds away. However, I found that my grounds were still full of flavor, so I drained it, and poured in another gallon of cold water and let sit for 12 more hours. Yup, just as good as the first batch.

Another sweet fact, instead of throwing those coffee grounds away, mix them into your composter, add a couple tablespoons to your house plants, or mix it in a couple of gallons of water and water those outside plants and gardens. There are Fabulous results being reported all over on this wonderful natural fertilizer.

Fall Clean Up

Ah, the beauty of fall. The leaves turn orange and yellow and red. The holiday season is just around the corner and do you hear it.....the neighborhood is quiet. Yes, we love fall around here. Here where I live, the leaves are on the tree for less then a week after they start changing. We go from summer to winter in no time. The simple beauty of fall gives way quickly to the clean up of fall.
Raking, piling, raking some more, sweeping and doing it again tomorrow since the neighbors leaves blew into your yard.

I learned this year that instead of raking up and bagging all those leaves, we could just run the lawn mower over them on the mulch setting. This seems like an easy way to feed our lawn and save labor. If you have too many leaves to leave on the ground, rake a few and place them on top of your garden beds. Give a little turn and you will have beautiful soil in the spring.

The key to leaving the leaves on the grass for the winter is if you can still see grass blades you are fine. So, mulch away.

Green Ideas - Soda Bottle Solar Lights

What a great inventive idea. Why this was invented for 3rd world countries, I bet we could find wonderful green uses in our own homes. A great recycled use for those bottles.