Browsing: Gardening & Farming

Gardening & Farming LED grow lights for indoor cannabis plant.
LED Grow Lights: The Right Choice for Your Indoor Cannabis Plants

Several states in the USA such as Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Nevada, Massachusetts and the federal district of Washington D.C. allow personal cannabis cultivation for recreational growers and medical patients. In certain states such as California, recreational cultivation is limited to indoor growing.

For some cannabis growers, the main goal is to maximize the […]

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Gardening & Farming loseup of chicken with others in background
Chicken Tractors and Sustainable Poultry Pasture

Chickens have long been some of the most widely raised “farm” animals. While chickens have been valued for providing an easily obtainable source of protein, when put out to “pasture”, chickens can also help to improve the land and landscape. Your grandmother may very well have complained to you about chickens eating her garden greens […]

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Gardening & Farming three shiitake mushrooms on a wooden board
Growing Shiitake Mushrooms: An Inexpensive Delicacy

The Chinese people have been using shiitake mushrooms as a nutritional and medicinal food for over 6,000 years. One of the most well-known of the edible mushroom, shiitakes, have recently been discovered by the health food movement around the world and are considered to be one of the top superfoods most widely available. Instead […]

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Gardening & Farming tender seedling growing out of top soil
Lasagna Gardening: Build Soil And Get Rid Of Weeds

Healthy top soil, or humus, is necessary for growing healthy plants. However, top soil takes dozens of years to naturally accumulate through the slow decomposition of leaves and other organic material. For people who don’t have the budget to buy those overpriced bags of garden soil sold at hardware stores, lasagna gardening is a quick […]

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Gardening & Farming farmer harvesting crops using industrial agricultural methods
Food Forests For Abundant And Ecological Production

One of the biggest challenges we collectively face as a species is how to grow sufficient food for our growing population. Large scale farming dependent on fossil fuel inputs, dangerous chemicals and genetically modified organisms has only increased our vulnerability. Food forests offer us an opportunity to revolutionize the way we grow our food, offering […]

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Gardening & Farming small pond storing water on a property in the fall
Storing Water In Landscapes: A Swales And Ponds Primer

Rain is often seen to be one of the leading causes of soil erosion. The problem isn’t with rain itself, but rather with bad land management practices and farming practices that aren’t designed to take advantage of the rain. The best place to store water is in the landscape itself, and through the process of […]

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Gardening & Farming woman planting plants using mulch for no-till agriculture
No-till Farming for Healthier Soil and Lifestyles

Masanobu Fukuoka, the late Japanese farmer, developed a unique farming system he called “Natural Farming”. Trying to replicate what he saw in Nature, Fukuoka’s no till system allowed the soil to continually grow in fertility. Through the use of mulch and cover crops, this system effectively allows for continuous harvests of crop rotations, eliminates weeds […]

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Gardening & Farming tilled earth on farmland exposing rich topsoil
Topsoil: A Catalyst for Better Health and Nutrition

Where do we stand without soil? Everything begins and ends with the soil.

‘Topsoil’ is the upper couple inches of soil that covers large areas of the arable parts of the surface of our Earth. It is formed by the slow but steady decomposition of organic material by a host of microscopic organisms.

Unfortunately, close […]

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Gardening & Farming dandelions in the foreground with grass behind
The Surprising Health Benefits in Your Weedy Lawn

What exactly is a weed?

Great thinkers have argued over a proper definition for centuries. Ralph Waldo Emerson provided a redemptive perspective on the scourge of gardeners by calling them “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered”, while Doug Larson took the more pragmatic approach- that they are “a plant that has mastered […]

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