Gifts From the
Garden
By
Scotie Keithlow
Nothing works best and gives more pleasure than creating specialized gifts for friends and relatives on Christmas. The personal touch that you give adds to the value of the gift that money cannot add. If you are fond of gardening yourself and find that you end up with a large amount of vegetables or flowers each year, then making gifts out of the excess fruits and vegetables that your garden gives you may prove to be a great idea.
You could make jars of pickles and stew tomatoes and can them. You could also pickle green beans or olives and put them in a transparent bottle to look presentable. If you have fruits from your garden then making preserves and jams is a good idea. Not only can you make large quantities and pack them individually but can also ensure that your relatives enjoy them for a long time. Raspberry or strawberry jam or syrup is a great idea. You could also decide to dehydrate apples and make an apple pie in a jar. This can be done by adding sugar and cinnamon to it. Then all you need to do to make homemade apple pie is to dump a scoopful in a pie shell and bake it and you have yummy apple pie that you can serve to your guests or your children any time. To make the gift as perfect as possible, you can buy wooden crates and decorate them before you place the cans of goodies and make a picnic basket out of them. A few personalized words on the crate can make all the difference.
For those who have gardens of their own and get enough produce from them to appreciate these gifts, you could choose to go to a favorite store and pick up specialty gardening tools that they mind find practical for their own use. One of the best items to buy is a gardening cart. Make sure to pick one that is made of molded plastic and ensure that it has wheels. Many of the gardening carts that come today are designed so that you can sit on them and wheel yourself along the bed of vegetables. This obviates the need for bending and creeping as you go about weeding, harvesting or sowing. Separate compartments where you can keep the gardening tools, and seeds and vegetables and weeds is an added bonus.
These gifts form a great option. Those who do not have a vegetable or fruit garden of their own appreciate the hard work that goes in growing and then preserving the vegetables. And people who have gardens will definitely appreciate a great and thoughtful gift like garden tools, gardening carts or seeds of rare species of flowers or fruits.
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Home Composting - Is It
Worth It To Get Cracked Up About?
By
Kristin Kersten
Home composting is much the same process as the farmers use in their fields. Everything that is taken from the soil must be returned somehow in order to produce a productive crop the following year. Whether you're farming thousands of acres or a simple 20x40 garden spot.
There are many ways to get nutrients into the ground. I'm sure you've heard of fertilizer. Fertilizer can be purchased from a local garden center and will help to maintain your garden and flowerbed health. For best results, fertilizer must be applied often in order for the plants to benefit from it. There are also liquid mixtures you can apply. These are generally a little more expensive than the dry, but do an adequate job as well. Both dry and liquid fertilizers can be bulky and take less time in the preparation process.
Home composting has been around for quite some time. It is looked at as often being a cheaper way to provide back to the soil exactly what it needs. There are quite a few locals that use home composting piles. These are often in the back yard, away from the house where no one goes. They oftentimes stink, wild animals can be known to get into them, and they require regular routine maintenance. All of the above can be great when you're a outdoors fanatic and enjoy turning compost on a daily basis. After all, it's definitely worth it in the end!
A newer trend in home composting for those that are closer to city limits and suburban areas is to get a compost tumbler. They are rather inexpensive when you figure the amount of years you will use them. Home composting with a compost tumbler is very similar to the old pile, it's just that the compost tumbler generally has the exact right environment to help speed up the process, creating more goodies for your growing plants.
What can you put in an home composting pile or compost tumbler? Think of all the things that you haul from your yard such as leaves, grass, over ripe plants, dead or decaying flowers and plants as well as you household fruits and vegetables all can be applied to your home composting pile. Even a little manure from a local hobby farmer or rancher would hurt a thing.
Home composting in time will create better structure in the soil. If you've got hard garden soil that you think will never break up, I suggest you get a compost tumbler and see what it can do for you. As an agronomist for a local coop for 4 1/2 years, I've found it fun to take what I've learned from the field and apply to my backyard. You will certainly see your garden and flowerbeds take shape over time. The ground will become lighter, plants will grow better, and stronger!
Yes, home composting is friendly to the environment, and not to mention much cheaper in the long run than buying fertilizer. Home composting is an all natural way to put back to the earth what we took out. Our garden and flowerbeds will thank us for it in the long run!
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