(NaturalNews) There is nothing like enjoying the fruits of your labor, literally! The seeds you just planted turn out as little shoots and flowers until they grow into bulbs and finally young little things waiting for their weaning. Picking the tomatoes and leafy greens you’ve been waiting to grow for weeks, can give you a feeling of achievement and pride bordering almost on being a parent.

If you don’t have a green thumb, don’t worry. Gardening, like all skills, requires time to develop. There isn’t even a standard to follow. How you develop your garden will all depend on the resources on hand and how you want develop it.

Creating a vegetable garden is not rocket science. In fact, producing your own food and feeding your family in the process can be fun and inexpensive way of engaging in food production. It teaches you as well your family the value of self-reliance and food security.
You can indulge in this venture as a hobby and a source of physical activity, which contributes to the maintenance of mental health. As a means of making your own personal contribution, it is a delightful way to earn extra cash. The following are some techniques that you can use in plotting out your organic farming venture:

1. Avoid the use of chemical inputs – In organic farming, no chemical products like herbicides, pesticides or even fertilizers are used. Plants are allowed to grow without the intervention of chemicals allowing for safe handling from farm to plate guaranteeing a nutritious and healthy yield. Moreover, because no chemical inputs are used, it translates to large savings for farmers while keeping the environment safe.

2. Take advantage of the “biological fight”- In nature, agriculture can take advantage of organisms that are natural predators of parasites and are allies to plants. Insects like ladybugs and chrysopes feed on aphids, while frogs and birds eat insects, snails and worms. Welcoming these animals in your garden contribute to a healthy ecosystem that ensure your vegetables are safe from toxins.

3. Preserve hedges and thickets, replant along the borders to offer shelter and food to animals and insects useful to cultivation – To take advantage of the “biological fight,” provide the necessary environment for insects and animals that feed on pests can take shelter and feed. Preserving hedges and thickets encourages these beneficial predators to stay in your property and assist in your efforts at organic farming. This symbiotic mutual relationship can help farmers improve their yield while providing a balanced and sustainable nature-friendly ecosystem.

4. Use cultivation – Cultivating the earth depletes it from nutrients. It is, therefore, necessary to give it fallow period, so it can regain what it had lost after a cropping season. This method allows for simplification of organic farming since it can provide some natural advantages. The interchange of different plants that undermine disease and pests is cost-effective, because it takes away pest control and disease prevention and is normally done as a commercial, agricultural venture that makes for an ideal option to farmers everywhere.

5. Use natural fertilizers -Nature has its own fertilizers. They are either of animal origin such as manure or plant origin, like green manure or organic leftovers from the kitchen. Fertilizers help the soil retain nutrients. Moreover, the introduction of legumes whose roots contain bacteria that convert nitrogen in the air to soluble nitrogen in crop rotation allows for keeping the soil’s fertility intact.

6. Monitor seasonal conditions – Keeping tab on the environment to schedule the right moment to carry out treatments against certain diseases affecting plants can be identified, thus resulting in the use of the necessary products at the right time, saving money, time and effort.

7. Consider using raised beds -This method is advantageous for controlling aching backs and can help keep weeds at bay while saving space for other uses. Raised beds mean you don’t have to walk on your beds, and they are no wider than a couple of meters. You can reach anywhere in the bed without stepping on the soil and once undertaken, the garden won’t require some heavy digging.

Gardening is neither a new concept nor is it a fad. It is the oldest and most practical means of producing food. Organic vegetables are prettier, healthier and tastier than their non-organic cousins. Moreover, it benefits not just you but the environment as well as the animals that live of the land, resulting to a balanced and healthy ecosystem.

Sources for this article:
http://www.foodsecurity.org/UAHealthFactsheet.pdf
http://www.naturalnews.com/033925_organic_farming_crop_yields.html
http://jamesagbogun.hubpages.com
http://en.romaincampagna.it

Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/tips-for-creating-a-successful-organic-vegetable-garden-anywhere

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Here is our Wichita Chiropractor Weekly Sticky:

The object of the carnival game Whack-a-Mole is to use a mallet to hit as many critters as possible when they pop up in random succession. Trouble is, as you hit one mole, three more pop up and disappear before you can nail them all. Whack-a-Mole is a perfect metaphor for how people are medicated today. Unfortunately in this game you end up on a ton of drugs, for a bunch of problems, with no actual improvement in your health.

According to a NCHS Data brief by the CDC, over the last 10 years the percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44% to 48%. The use of two or more drugs increased from 25% to 31%. The use of five or more drugs increased from 6% to 11%. Yet despite taking all these drugs, the US embarrassingly ranks 37th among the world’s industrial countries when it comes overall health.

For Chiropractors, health is not defined by how many symptoms you can temporarily ‘whack away’ with drugs, but how well your body can adapt to its environment and heal under its own innate abilities. You have more healing intelligence in your little finger than all the doctors and pharmacies in the world put together. Big Pharma doesn’t believe so, but Chiropractors do. Keep your Nerve System clear and you won’t have to play their failing game.

Thank you Rob at http://theweeklysticky.com

Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/symptomatic-whack-a-mole

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Here is our Wichita Chiropractic Weekly Health Alert:

The most recent research is showing that relatively short bursts of intense exercise — even if done only a total of a few minutes each week — will deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of spending hours at conventional exercise.

Just by doing three minutes of High Intensity Training (HIT) a week for four weeks, you can expect to see significant changes in insulin sensitivity and other important health indices.

BBC News reports:

“So how does it work? … [P]art of the explanation is (probably) that HIT uses far more of our muscle tissue than classic aerobic exercise. When you do HIT, you are using not just the leg muscles, but also the upper body including arms and shoulders, so that 80% of the body’s muscle cells are activated, compared to 20-40% for walking or moderate intensity jogging or cycling.”

Sources:
BBC News February 28, 2012

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Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/can-three-minutes-of-exercise-a-week-help-make-you-fit

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Chiropractor Weekly Sticky:

Remember the lead character in Goldilocks and the Three Bears? She didn’t settle for too hot, or too cold – too hard, or too soft. She kept trying until she found what was JUST RIGHT. When it comes to fighting disease, your body innately strives for the same thing.

Disease is nothing more than your body performing too much or too little of something. If your thyroid is UNDER active, you have hypothyroidism. If your lungs OVER react to dust in the air, you experience asthma. If your heart pumps too HARD, you have high blood pressure. Health on the other hand is when your body is clearly directed by its inner wisdom to produce, adapt, regenerate, secrete, eliminate, filter and metabolize to a degree that’s JUST RIGHT.

Chiropractors recognize that no doctor, pharmacy or research lab on the planet can live up the awesome task of keeping EVERYTHING in your body working JUST RIGHT. Only innate intelligence, the immeasurable genius within you, is capable of handling that job. The best we can do as Chiropractors is to remove the stress that gets in its way. When we do, we know innate will only settle for what’s JUST RIGHT inside you.

As always, thanks to our friends at The Weekly Sticky.

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Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/innate-and-the-three-bears

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Here is our weekly healthy recipe, this week it is from: Simply Recipes

Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord as he shares a lip-smacking recipe for mushroom stir-fry he recreated from one he enjoyed in China. ~Elise

During a recent trip through China I ate a lot of life changing food. Sichuan stir-fried duck tongues, homemade noodles in beef sauce, spicy lotus root with ginger, Sandouping-style boiled peanuts, curried yak with butter, deep fried river shrimp with garlic… Oh! The list goes on! You can believe that I was taking plenty of notes so that I could recreate these dishes back in the States.

While in Beijing and Xi’an I noticed that much of the food there was sweeter than the rest of China. One particular dish we had quite a few times was a simple mushroom stir-fry. It was spicy, but not too much. Just enough to make the tongue tingle a bit. It was also quite sweet, but not sickeningly so. When I asked one of the cooks what made it sweet he pulled down a jar of practically-black honey whose musky fragrance, even with the lid firmly closed, dominated a kitchen packed with garlic and scallions. I was smitten.

I went back to my dish and began to pick it apart; chilies, garlic, ginger, and glazed mushrooms of all kinds… I was so keen on how the cook had achieved such flavor with such simple ingredients that I was determined to figure it out.

After a bit of playing I’ve re-created the recipe and I think it’s rather spot on. Composed of a lightly sweet glaze, a carefree sauce, and ingredients you likely have at home or can easily find at any grocery store it’s a light, savory, and honeyed recipe you’ll quickly add to your cold weather repertoire.

Sweet and Spicy Mushroom Stir Fry Recipe

Any clear honey will do, the darker the better.

Ingredients

Glaze

• 1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock (use vegetable stock for vegetarian option)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce (use gluten-free soy sauce if cooking gluten-free)

Sauce

• 1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock (use vegetable stock for vegetarian option)
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (use gluten-free soy sauce if cooking gluten-free)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon shaoxing cooking wine or cooking sherry
• 1 tablespoon corn starch

Stir-Fry

• 4 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 2-5 dried red chilies, roughly chopped OR 1/4-1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes
• 3 tablespoons sesame, grapeseed, or other high smoke-point oil
• 2 lbs. of mixed mushrooms (oyster, crimini, button, shitake, enoki, whathaveyou…), roughly chopped or quartered (you want bite-sized pieces)
• 1 1/2 cups of snow peas or snap peas, de-stringed
• 8 green onions, chopped
• Toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Method

1 Make the glaze by whisking together the stock, honey, and soy sauce in a bowl and set aside. Make the sauce by whisking together the stock, soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, cooking wine or sherry, and the corn starch in a bowl and set that aside as well.

2 Place 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet or a wok over high heat. When the oil is glistening and a bead of water evaporates in under a second add the mushrooms and toss. Allow the mushrooms to cook for a few minutes until they start to squeak and give up their water (you’ll see their water in the pan). When they do add the glaze. Allow the glaze to boil off, stirring occasionally, about 5-6 minutes. When barely any more liquid remains take the mushrooms off the heat and set them aside in a bowl. There may be bits of sugar caramelized to the side of the pan, don’t fret about it.

3 Reduce the heat to medium and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Add the garlic, ginger, and chilies and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the snow peas and green onions and toss for about 30 more seconds.

4 Increase heat to high. Add the sauce and allow the mixture to come to a boil. The sauce will thicken considerably. Add the mushrooms back to the mixture and cook for about 20 more seconds. Take off the heat. Serve over rice and garnish with sesame seeds if using.

Yield: Serves 4.

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Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/sweet-and-spicy-mushroom-stir-fry

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This week’s recipe comes to us from Jane Spice.

Last night was our annual crab fest gathering with a few of my special friends. We plan our crab dinner within the first week of crab season in San Francisco. I love crab, and crab to me is a big deal.

But last night, it was this sweet potato soup that stole the show. We forgot about the crab, and instead couldn’t stop singing the virtues of this simple sweet potato soup.

Sweet potato is the key ingredient in this soup recipe, and is enriched with the addition of cashews and tomato sauce. The soup is soft, silky, lightly sweet, and heart warming. A touch of garam masala spice – which is an Indian spice blend works perfectly here. It gives the soup the depth of flavor and warmth. We topped each bowl with creme fraiche and cilantro for an added flavor kick.

This is a knockout soup, and I can’t wait to make it again.

6

Bake the sweet potatoes in foil for about 45 minutes in oven at 400 (make sure to pierce the skin of the potato to help them breathe while cooking) Let the potatoes cool (half an hour) Peel skin off potato In a large blender (we recommend a vita mix!): combine all ingredients including the sweet potato. Blend for a few minutes until all ingredients are mixed well together. Move soup to a stove top pot and heat for about 10 minutes or until desired temperature Serve with dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche and cilantro! Freezes very nicely

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Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/sweet-potato-soup-with-a-touch-of-garam-masala

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Here is our Chiropractic Weekly Health Alert:

For a number of years, scientists have been studying “brown fat”.  Brown fat is a heat-generating fat that burns energy instead of storing it. Human newborns have a supply of brown fat to keep warm, but by adulthood they lose most of their stores of it.

In a new study, scientists found that they were able to activate the brown fat still present in adult men by exposing them to cold temperatures. The men burned more calories and lost white fat, the kind that causes obesity.

Time Magazine reports:

“Knowing that chilling the body triggers brown fat to mobilize could lead to an entirely new strategy for weight loss, the researchers suggested. Treatments could focus on activating brown fat without having to keep people in the cold.”

Sources:

Time Magazine January 26, 2012

Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/chiropractic-weekly-health-alert-new-way-to-lose-weight

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You can’t sleep, your energy levels are low and you’re finding it harder to make it through your day. The specialists insist there’s nothing wrong, but you innately feel like something’s out of tune. Maybe it’s time to call the Chiropractor.

D.D. Palmer, the Father of Chiropractic, recognized that repetitive physical, chemical and emotional stress can alter the normal ‘tone’ within a person’s Nerve System (a.k.a. Subluxation). This persistent irritation can lead to poor physical, mental and emotional performance. The solution? Restore normal tone to the Nerve System with specific, Chiropractic adjustments and better health will naturally follow!

Health is the ‘music’ that plays when all your cells, tissues and organs vibrate perfectly in unison – orchestrated by a finely tuned Nerve System. If you’re feeling sluggish, weak and tired, a trip to the Chiropractor may just be the thing YOU need to get back in key.

Thanks to our friends at: The Weekly Sticky

Article source: http://www.chiropracticmasters.com/chiropractic/chiropractic-weekly-sticky-feeling-a-bit-out-of-tune

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