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Five Tips To Improving Your Home’s Value
Are you one of thousands of Americans who are thinking about improving your current home or buying a "fixer-upper" home? Before you take the leap, here are five things you should know before you start spending your money.
1) Life Style Home...
Home Buying - A Good Investment
The trend of having multiple properties is not something new but this is becoming a mass act these days.Earlier multiple buying was not very common practice but these days it’s the hot favorite of the public to buy more than one house or land or any...
Mortgage Qualification Problems – Low Appraisals
The real estate market in the United States is undeniably hot, hot, hot. This toward pace has resulted in an odd mortgage qualification problem – low appraisals. Here are your options if you get a low appraisal amount.
Appraisals
An appraisal...
Selling Your Home - A FSBO's Guide to Keeping It Safe
Home sellers not only need to think like a realtor in finding potential buyers for their homes, they also need to think like a personal security agent.
Sellers need to keep their safety in mind when prospecting potential buyers. The real...
Understanding Real Estate Lease Options
If you are an investor that sells properties using lease options you no-doubt understand why it can be an appealing avenue for those that need rental history and/or rent credits to help a challenging credit file. But, would YOU consider buying a...
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How to Grow Healthy Food
words: 400
How to Grow Healthy Food
To grow healthy food, you literally have to start at rock bottom. No matter what you’re growing, from chickpeas to chickens, the truth is that you are what they eat!
It’s no secret that all life begins with the soil. Although it may look like dirt to the naked eye, organically rich soil is a living, breathing community of microorganisms. These little denizens of the dirt are born, grow, breed, give birth and die leaving an estate of nutrition-filled remains to the soil. While they live, many of these little critters feed on undesirable elements like harmful bacteria.
Every year, gardeners spend thousands of dollars on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that are little more than a quick fix to gardening problems and create long-term health hazards for everyone, from humans to single-celled organisms in the soil. If you really want to grow healthy food, the first step is to keep your underground colony in good health.
There are two things you need to do to maintain healthy soil. The first is to keep out the chemicals. The second is to add rich organic matter to your soil at regular intervals.
Keep out the chemicals
No matter
what amount of chemical you use in your gardening, a drop is a deluge to a microorganism. More to the point, most chemicals don’t fade away. They leech into your garden and wait to attach to some growing thing… like your plants. One example is a gardener who claims to grow organic apples. He doesn’t spray his trees, but he does use a chemical “weed & feed” application on his lawn, seemingly unaware of the systemic consequences of using chemicals.
Feed your soil
The best way to enrich your soil is to give it regular applications of composted organic matter. Compost can be anything from yard mulch to kitchen vegetable waste. If you don’t have the time to maintain a compost bin, an easy way to add organic matter to your yard is through mowing your lawn with a mulching mower. Prepared compost is also available for purchase from nurseries and home garden centers.
Remember the house that Jack built? It’s similar in your garden. The roots take from the soil to give to the stems that bear the buds that turn into the fruit…. Whether or not the fruit is healthy depends on what was in the soil.
About the Author
Linda is editor of Gardening Guides
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