Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is the practice of a diet that excludes meat (including game and slaughter by-products), fish (including shellfish and other sea animals) and poultry. There are several variants of the diet, some of which also exclude eggs and/or some products produced from animal labour such as dairy products and honey.

A vegan diet is a form of vegetarianism which excludes all animal products from the diet, such as meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, eggs and honey. Strict veganism also excludes the use of animal products such as wool, silk, leather, and fur for attire and adornment, even though some of these do not directly involve the death or slaughter of an animal.

Most vegetarians consume dairy products, and many eat eggs. Lacto-vegetarianism includes dairy products but excludes eggs, ovo-vegetarianism includes eggs but not dairy, and lacto-ovo-vegetarianism includes both eggs and dairy products.

Semi-vegetarianism consists of a diet largely of vegetarian foods, but may include fish and sometimes even poultry, as well as dairy products and eggs. The association of semi-vegetarianism with vegetarianism in popular vernacular, particularly pescetarianism (also called pesco-vegetarianism and described as a "vegetarian" diet that includes fish, has led to what vegetarian groups cite as improper categorisation of these diets as vegetarian. The Vegetarian Society, which initiated popular usage of the term vegetarian as early as 1847, condemns the association of semi-vegetarian diets as valid vegetarianism; the organisation points out that the consumption of fish is not vegetarian.

The reasons for choosing vegetarianism may be related to morality, religion, culture, ethics, aesthetics, environment, society, economy, politics, taste, or health. A generic term for both vegetarianism and veganism, as well as for similar diets, is "plant-based diets". Properly planned vegetarian diets have been found to satisfy the nutritional needs for all stages of life, and large-scale studies have shown vegetarianism to significantly lower risks of cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and other diseases.

Worms Do More than Make Great Soil

Get out your vermicomposter. It seems using worm compost in your vegetable garden will significantly cut down on damage by sucking ad chewing insects like aphids, mealy bugs and caterpillars. Scientists are certain why the worm compost helps, but we always knew it couldn’t hurt.

Battle Bugs With Worm Compost

Greenhouse trials were conducted at Ohio State University to determine the effects of vermicompost (worm compost) on some common insect pests of vegetables. In the trials, 40 percent, 20 percent, or zero vermicompost (derived from food waste) was added to a commercial potting soil in which tomato, pepper, and cabbage seedlings were grown. The seedlings were then exposed to pests: Adult aphids (Myzus persicae) or mealy bugs (Pseudococcus species) were added to the tomato and pepper cages, while cabbage caterpillars (Pieris brassicae) were added to the cabbage cages.

The average number of aphids and mealy bugs on pepper seedlings decreased significantly due to additions of vermicompost (regardless of percentage). The average number of mealy bugs on tomato seedlings also decreased significantly with additions of vermicompost. Average cabbage plant loss (based on leaf area) due to caterpillars was significantly reduced with additions of vermicompost.

The OSU researchers concluded that vermicompost results in major suppression of sucking and chewing insects. Though not sure why vermicompost helped suppress pest populations, they speculated that it might contain essential nutrients not present in the potting soil that could make the seedlings more stress resistant, less attractive to the pests, or perhaps both.
Source: N.Q. Arancon, P.A. Galvis, and C.A. Edwards, "Suppression of Insect Populations and Damage to Plants by Vermicomposts," Bioresource Technology 96(10), July 2005, 1137–42 (Elsevier, P.O. Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

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Herbs work especially well as companion plants. They multitask by attracting beneficial insects and repelling pest insects and their fragrance and foliage make them good companions in both the vegetable garden and the ornamental border. The following list is compiled from experience and other people’s suggestions. Keep in mind that some things work in conjunction with other factors in the environment and your results might not be the same as mine. However with some tweaking here and there, you should be able to use plants to keep a better balance in your gardens.

Using Herbs As Companion Plants to Deter Pests
Aphids - Chives, Coriander, Nasturtium
Ants - Tansy
Asparagus Beetle - Pot Marigold
Bean Beetle - Marigold, Nasturtium, Rosemary
Cabbage Moth - Hyssop, Mint (also clothes moths), Oregano, Rosemary, Sage, Southernwood, Tansy, Thyme
Carrot Fly - Rosemary, Sage
Flea Beetle - Catmint (Contains nepetalactone, an insect repellent. Steep in water and spray on plants.), Mint
Flies - Basil, Rue
Fruit Tree Moths - Southernwood
Japanese Beetles - Garlic & Rue (When used near roses and raspberries), Tansy
Potato Bugs - Horseradish
Mosquitoes - Basil, Rosemary
Moths - Santolina
Nematodes - Marigold (Marigolds should be established for at least 1 year before their nematode deterring properties will take effect.)
Savory, Winter - Some insect repelling qualities
Squash Bugs & Beetles - Nasturtium, Tansy
Ticks - Lavender (Also thought to repel mice and moths.)Continue

Control the Insect Balance in Your Garden

Companion planting is an age old tradition. It’s a gardening technique that involves planting two or more plants near each other to derive some type of benefit. That benefit could be more vigorous growth, higher yield, repelling pests or attracting predators of common pests. Scientific research doesn’t always agree with the folklore of companion planting, but who knows? Science changes and at the very least, we know that diversity in the garden cuts back on problems.

Learning which plants to pair as companions takes a bit of trial and error. For example: anise seems to germinate better when grown with coriander, but coriander doesn’t grow well next to anise. Garlic deters Japanese beetles, but planted to close to anything in the pea and bean family and it will inhibit their growth.

One of the most compelling reasons to use the companion planting technique is the ability of certain plants to attract beneficial insects. Beneficials are insects that feed on common garden pests, like aphids and caterpillars. Beneficial insects are considered the good guys and are why gardeners are cautioned not to spray insecticides at random.

Beneficial Insects That Should be Welcome In Your Garden
Parasitoid wasps - feed on aphids, caterpillars and grubs
Lacewing larvae - feed on aphids
Ladybug larvae - feed on aphids
Ground beetles - feed on ground-dwelling pests.
Hover flies, and Robber flies - feed on many insects, including leafhoppers and caterpillars

Because insects tend to have different feeding requirements during the various stages of their development, a diversity of plant material is essential to attracting them. Although beneficial insects do feast on pest insects, there may be certain points in their life cycles when their diets are confined to nectar and pollen. So to attract these insects to your garden, you will need to provide host plants and even plants for shelter.

Diversity in both plant material and season of availability are crucial. Hedge rows used to serve this function. The trees, shrubs and weeds would leaf out sooner in the spring than cultivated crops and provide early food sources.
Hedge rows are rare today, but we could easily plant a mixed border of fruiting and flowering trees and shrubs and perennials that has something in bloom all season. This patchwork of plants would benefit your ornamentals and planting it near a vegetable garden will insure beneficials on your vegetable crops.

What You’ll Need to Provide To Attract Beneficial Insects:

Low growing plants as cover for ground beetles (thyme, rosemary, or mint)
Shady, protected areas for laying eggs
Tiny flowers for tiny wasps, like plants from the Umbelliferae family: fennel, angelica, coriander, dill, Queen Anne’s Lace, clovers, yarrow, and rue
Composite flowers (daisy and chamomile) and mints (spearmint, peppermint, or catnip) to attract predatory wasps, hover flies, and robber flies
Using Herbs As Companion Plants to Deter Pests

Bad And Good Soil

How Do You Know if You Have Bad SoilThe only definitive way to know for sure is to have it tested. Your Cooperative Extension probably provides this service for a nominal fee. Many nurseries also test soil.

A quick guestimate of your soils health can be made by looking at your plants health. If they are thriving, don’t fix what isn’t broken. If your plants are languishing, yellowing or otherwise looking sickly or you feel like you are forever feeding them, it would be worth testing your soil.

Making Good SoilIf your pH is off, you will get a recommendation for adding either lime, to raise the alkalinity, or sulfur, to lower the pH. This is easy enough to do and should be done in stages, so as not to shock the plants. Generally it is recommended that you not add more than 5 pounds of lime or sulfur per 100 sq. ft. of existing garden. If you were wise enough to test your soil before putting in a garden or lawn, go ahead and dump in the whole recommended amount.

Adding Nutrients If you find you need to add nutrients to your soil, you’ll have the choice of organic or inorganic. Inorganic fertilizer has some pluses in its favor. It is usually cheaper than organic fertilizer and it acts more quickly. However, it does nothing for the soil and in some cases actually damages the soil with its higher salt content. So inorganic fertilizers don’t actually amend the soil, they simply feed the plant. It is kind of like a human being trying to survive on vitamin supplements and no substantial food. There have also been some recent studies that claim plants build up a resistance to inorganic fertilizers and require more and more of them to get the same results.

That organic fertilizers are slower acting is actually a good thing. They release their nutrients over a period of time. There are many good complete organic fertilizers on the market. A complete fertilizer is one that contains all three primary nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. See How To Read a Fertilizer Label for more information on that. You can also get supplemental nutrition from products like manure and fish emulsion for nitrogen, bone meal for phosphorus and wood ashes for potassium. If you’ve had your soil tested, you’ll know what you need to add.

Adding Organic Matter Back to organic matter, this is the only amendment that aids both the fertility and the texture of the soil. Whether it’s animal manure or plant humus, you will be feeding the soil and the whole ecosystem that exists there. The soil in turn will feed your plants.
There are many types of organic matter.

Compost makes an excellent amendment and if you are composting your garden waste, it’s free.
Manure can often be obtained from local farms and stables. Manure should be composted and decomposed until it turns dark, crumbly and odorless. Fresh manure has too much ammonia in it and can burn your plants and offend your neighbors.
Peat moss is cheap and works well to loosen the soil. It is also very dusty. Wet it first to make it easier to work with.

You can even work grass clipping and other debris directly into the garden bed to decompose slowly. Be sure whatever you put down is free of seed.
Cover crops or green manure are crops grown on unused soil with the intent of tilling them in and letting them decompose in the garden. The roots keep the soil loosened as they grow and the plants suppress weeds. Cover crops from the legume family, like clover and vetch, also add nitrogen to the soil.

Bottom LineAdjusting you soils pH, fertility and texture to your plants liking is the final say in making good soil. Your plants will determine what your soil’s pH should be. Organic matter will improve the soil in the long run. All soil will benefit from the addition of organic matter. How well your soil incorporates the organic matter will determine how much supplemental feeding will be necessary.

Organic Gardening

Many gardeners wonder what exactly organic gardening means. The simple answer is that organic gardeners don't use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides on their plants. But gardening organically is much more than what you don't do. When you garden organically, you think of your plants as part of a whole system within Nature that starts in the soil and includes the water supply, people, wildlife and even insects.

An organic gardener strives to work in harmony with natural systems and to minimize and continually replenish any resources the garden consumes. Organic gardening, then, begins with attention to the soil. You regularly add organic matter to the soil, using locally available resources wherever possible. And everyone has access to the raw ingredients of organic matter, because your lawn, garden and kitchen produce them everyday.

Decaying plant wastes, such as grass clippings, fall leaves and vegetable scraps from your kitchen, are the building blocks of compost, the ideal organic matter for your garden soil. If you add compost to your soil, you're already well on your way to raising a beautiful, healthy garden organically. The other key to growing organically is to choose plants suited to the site. Plants adapted to your climate and conditions are better able to grow without a lot of attention or input; on the other hand, when you try to grow a plant that is not right for your site, you will probably have to boost its natural defenses to keep it healthy and productive.

Organic Foods For Healty Life 3

Just think what you can do for dessert. Decorate a cake with candied rose petals, make a violet custard, or serve an ice cream infused with lavender. These are not silly, pretentious ideas when you can go outside and look at what's there. The so-called "exotic" ingredient that lies at the end of your clippers is there because you made a place for it, noticed it, and finally used it: You charted your own course through leaves and beds to come up with treasures that chefs want and can't get, unless they know a farmer and are close enough to catch, before they fade, the fleeting moments of plant life. When you grow your own, you can see the possibilities your garden offers, and not only when things are at the stage--the only stage--that the supermarket shopper knows, but in all of their growing stages and, most important, the moment of their greatest flavor. An heirloom tomato grown in Belgium and sold in Texas simply can't rival even the most mundane variety grown (organically) by you. Kale punctured in a summer hailstorm can still be cooked; it need not be thrown away because of some visual standard created by a market.

There should be a warning: Cooking out of the garden will ruin you forever for anything less. It's not surprising that the garden is the ultimate inspiration for those who go inside at the end of the day to cook dinner. And what you make from what you grow becomes part of who you are, so that over time, without effort, you begin to catalog your tastes; remember what was exciting from years before, be it a platter of vibrant 'Green Zebra' tomatoes glistening under a scattering of sky blue blossoms or a gorgeous 'Triamble' squash. Recipes rush to suggest themselves from your harvest, flavors sparkle, vegetables shine, and fruit is truly sweet the way it can be only when picked ripe. Even when things are a struggle, it's still utterly rewarding to grow your own.

Good, gorgeous food is not about privileged shopping, but about surrounding yourself with plants and all the possibilities they offer. Seedling by seedling, leaf by leaf, you navigate through each year's garden, and in that way, you grow your life. You're no longer a spectator standing in the aisle reading about what's for dinner, but the one whose hands, tangled up with weeds and leaves, dirt and dust, end up with a squash that positively gleams.

RESOURCES
Deborah Madison, the founding chef of San Francisco's pioneering Greens Restaurant, is the author of many food books, including Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets. She gardens and cooks at her home in New Mexico. Find out what's happening with our food supply and how you can make a difference.

Books The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Learn about the ethical repercussions of our diet and how to make better choices. RodaleStore.com The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan. Follow four very different dinners through the food chain to understand their true costs.

Organic Foods For Healthy Life 2

Whether you are a seasoned gardener or a neophyte, I'm confident that the most important reason you have for filling your backyard with trellises, hills, and beds for vegetables is that growing your own leads you to an experience--first of all, of real food; but also of your connection to the earth, the seasons, the weather, and other people. You may have started gardening to correct problems in your own world, but the correction has surely enlarged your life, putting you right there where Jonathan Raban was when he sailed along the British coast, looking for signs that would tell him where he was. Garden, and you know where you are.

The signs a garden gives us to look at are many. Is the soil hard and dry with drought, or moist and full of worms? Did the lettuces sprout a month earlier than usual? Was it that late-spring rainstorm that kept the pollinators away from the fruit blossoms so that this will be a year without fruit, or was it that untimely freeze? Be in the garden, and you learn firsthand about the large and subtle shifts in the world around you--about climate change and global warming, about migration and survival, and about the astonishing ability of tender seedlings to push out of rough ground each year and grow.

Ultimately, your garden gives you a real experience of plenty and even diversity. Your garden gives you tasty little fennel and beet thinnings to add to a salad, or tiny zucchini attached to big yellow blossoms that are begging for fillings. Creeping purslane nourishes you with good omega-3s, and your luscious purple amaranth sprouts make a gorgeous garnish, as will the violet sage blossoms. Imagine having enough sorrel to use it by the fistful, instead of having to buy just eight sad leaves at a time. At last you can make a stupendous sorrel soup. You may discover that cauliflower greens are delicious, and that those small heads that come on at the end of the season lend great charm to a meal. A lovage leaf for your sandwich? No problem if you have a plant. Same with chive blossoms scattered on ricotta cheese or arugula sprouts adding bite and charm to a hard-cooked egg.

To Be Continued...

Organic Foods For Healthy Life

In his book Coasting, Jonathan Raban writes about sailing a boat around Britain. By constantly studying the coastline and taking his bearings on anything he could identify, then marking his progress on a map every 15 minutes, he was able to chart his course. Such attentive referencing left him with a vivid memory of the British coast, which, he says, is a profoundly different experience than sailing while watching GPS-monitored progress.

Reading Raban, I immediately recognized what he was saying through my experience cooking from a garden versus going to the store. Growing your own leaves a deep, lasting imprint on your body, psyche, and memory. Imagine it's before dinner and you're on your knees in front of a squash plant that has weathered the summer. Your hands part its big leaves, then slide over the sleek, shiny bodies of the ribbed 'Costata Romanesco' zucchini, assessing their natures and deciding which ones to pick.

Meanwhile, in a supermarket somewhere, a woman is turning over a shrink-wrapped package of dull-skinned zucchini. With distance, our relationship with food weakens. Those of us who garden are ecstatic about finding the first shoots of asparagus in the spring. But having no intimacy with asparagus flown here from Peru, we consequently recall little about eating it, even though it has made a rather astonishing journey, one that few asparagus spears have made before.

I believe that it's contact and memory, both of which increase as distance decreases between the soil and the table, that mark the difference between merely feeding and really nourishing ourselves. We seem to be in a collective state of anxiety about our food. Knowing that trucks and planes must roll and fly if you are to eat, and seeing the rising prices at the pump, you may suspect that there's a downside to your long-distance food and that food could get very costly.

You might well wonder if indeed it makes sense to fly a few ounces of easily grown arugula from one end of the country to the other in indestructible plastic clamshells. Should you rely on Big Organic, or support local farmers? Shop at high-end groceries, or at Wal-Mart? Are expensive organic vegetables as pure and wholesome as the stores would have us believe? Ask yourself any of these questions, and you might be tempted to throw up your hands and say, "Forget it, I'm growing my own!" And that would be a good idea.

To Be Continued....

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation.

Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 100 years ending in 2005. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations via an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with these findings, the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.

Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century. This range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.

Increasing global temperature is expected to cause sea levels to rise, an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, and significant changes to the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely leading to an expanse of tropical areas and increased pace of desertification. Other expected effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, mass species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.

Make The Compost

Data last Hygiene Office of Jakarta shows the amount of waste Jakarta until the current ± 27,966 M ³ per day. Composition, 65 percent of the organic waste and 35 percent of the waste nonorganik. So, if we want to count, residents of Jakarta can build a 1 Borobudur temple every 2 days from the piles of garbage. Wow!! This is only Jakarta, not other cities.

One way to reduce our solid waste is to compost organic waste to our home.

How:

Provide vessel diameter of 10 cm (that is not used again), given a hole to the bottom line, brown liquid (leachate) produce results. Give sand into the container as basically.

Then the remaining organic waste such as vegetables, fruits, food, etc. stacked on top of the sand.

On the third day after a sour smell, the remaining vegetables and food appealing lime (dolomide) add nutrients to the results of compost. give adequate water.

Then add the loose soil so that adequate odor can be restrained. For the next layer can start again with a little water to give, given the sand, the remaining vegetables / food, loose soil.

Making compost is done flaky. For vessel diameter of 10 cm mixture does not need to be stirred, but for a container the size of a larger mixture stirred.

The time required to become compost around one and a half months. Signs the produce compost finished a mixture of black and does not smell.

Compost can be used as fertilizer plants, planting media in the home or if sold could be a source of additional revenue.

The Most Expensive Gifts

Give the most expensive gifts to your children and grandchildren, World Free of Pollution. This gift can you give without money. Only from your own self happiness and health to your descendants.

What is it? Easy, simply apply the following principles 4 R careful you. Go Green!

* Reduce

Possible do to minimize the goods or materials that we use. The more we use the material, the more waste generated.

* Reuse

as possible choose items that can be used again. Avoid the use of goods disposable (single use). This can extend the use of goods before they become waste.

* Recycle

Much as possible, goods have no longer useful, can be recycled. Not all goods can be recycled, but currently has many industrial and non-formal industries that utilize household waste into other goods.

* Replace

Change of goods goods that can only be used once the goods are more durable. use goods that is more environmentally friendly. For example, replace the plastic bag with the basket when we shop, and do not use styrofoam because both these materials can not be explained naturally.

Cheap and easy going? GO GREEN!

Go Green! Start From Your House!

Global warming or global warming due to greenhouse gases in the earth increasingly become a concern among many of late. Various natural phenomena such as odd-seasons interchange kacaunya rhythm for example, into how the urgency of this issue of the environment.

What is the cause of the greenhouse gases that most? Electricity! Use of electricity is a source of the largest contributors (37%) greenhouse gases. Its generating electricity, the work will generate pollution, one CO2. Once the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the much heat wave surface of the earth is absorbed atmosphere.

The result? Earth surface temperature increased it. If the still life with my children, grandchildren and great-grandfather in your life front, start participating reducing greenhouse gases. Start your own from home using electricity efficiently in addition to brake global warming, even your electric bill reduced:)

Let us together support movement concerned about the environment, to save the earth future generation.

Soil With Worms

Become a trend today to use natural materials, after many impacts that are not good for man or nature itself by using a lot of fertilizers, chemical fertilizer. Chemical fertilizers are used to accelerate the intense and increasing food production, without considering the impact ripe for the land and our environment.

Has now become a trend, how we can accelerate the production of fertilizers in alamai, namely the use of red worms (red worms). Each worm can memakain quarter to half his body weight every day. So to be able to produce fertilizer quickly, we can use 1 kg worms to produce a pound of fertilizer.

How can we build integrated Farm, using the principles of recycling lives of living beings. Planting vegetables and livestock to support each other. Livestock worms will eat the remaining food and harvest the remaining plants, the result will be a compost that is used to fertilize the soil. The result can then be eaten to be used to feed worms. How can we create a reactor to produce fertilizer. This reactor can be scaled up to the scale of households with the industry.

Appropriate technology used to make reactor sehingg effective and efficient. Worms are organisms which can be order to accelerate the production of fertilizer. In a daily basis, we can utilize the results of the working worm. The more worms, the greater the production of compost.

Cattle dung is supporting the acceleration of the process of making this compost. Animals are selected for raising, which can generate productive soils we select for this intergrated Farm. Marmut, rabbit, hamster, goats, cattle, buffalo, and chicken, is the order of selection of cattle that can be used for the production of animal dung will be used as food for worms.