Why you should opt for home gardening?
Home gardening (or growing your own crops) gives you the best control over your food’s nutritional value and overall quality. Most important, when you start a home vegetable garden, you can guarantee that your food is non-GMO and does not come into contact with pesticides.
Another good reason to go in for home gardening is its low-cost efficiency, with many seeds available for mere pennies (let alone the free seeds you can collect from your market-bought organic produce). You can also find out how to make your very own fertilizer from compost.
Just imagine growing lots of tomatoes in your own backyard by investing only petty cash and some TLC, instead of buying them from a grocery store weekly and ‘shelling out’ money. Go thrifty for a change!
One of the other awesome benefits of home gardening is that it promotes mental health along with the physical health! Gardening is a proven practice to reduce accumulated stress and depression, over- dependence on medications and drugs, and early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. With gardening, your mental alertness (and even social skills) will be taken to another level – take my word for it!
8 Benefits Of Having Homemade Seed Tape
There is a new trend that green thumbs are falling in love with these days. It is called SEED TAPE!
What is a seed tape?
It is a biodegradable strip of paper with seeds already ‘planted’ inside. So, instead of sorting out tiny seeds in your hand, you can plant the entire seed tape, which will easily dissolve into the soil and reward you with healthy sprouts growing fast and neatly.
Of course, you can buy a seed tape, but learning how to make your own has many pluses, besides being very easy. Here are these benefits:
- It helps you plant seeds in an organized way.
- It prevents plants from fighting one another for space.
- It is biodegradable, so you don’t have to worry.
- Making your own seed tape avoids using ‘expired’ seeds
- You ensure seed quality (they are non- GMO and non-hybrid)
- You can get really creative with what you plant.
- You can even make a ‘fertilizer seed tape.’
- You can use seeds gathered from last year’s garden crop!
Here is how to make your own seed tape
It is strikingly simple to create this tape – it is actually similar to making a sandwich! Before you start the job, just decide which plants you will be growing this season, and follow the instructions below.
Do-It-Yourself Seed Tape
Materials you need:
- seeds to plant of your own choice
- all natural, bio-degradable napkin
- wax paper
- water soluble fertilizer
- eye dropper
- a sealable jar (when you don’t plan to plant your seeds right away)
What to do:
- Cut a napkin into strips ½ inch (about 5cm) wide each, and place them onto wax paper.
- Count out how many seeds you can place in the space you’re planting them in.
- Using the eye dropper, dampen the strips with some fertilizer.
- Place seeds onto each strip according to the recommended distance for their variety.
- Cover with a second strip. Again dampen with fertilizer.
- Cover with another piece of wax paper, and leave overnight to soak (you can hold the paper down using a small rock).
- The following day, remove wax paper, and allow your strips to dry. You can plant this seed tape right away or store it in a clean jar until planting season comes.
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Source:
http://ahta.org/
