Tag: Health Reasons

Long-Term Plans for Planting Vegetable Gardens

Long-term Plans for Planting Vegetable Gardens

A lot of people are beginning to see the benefits of planting vegetable gardens. Its usually healthier because you get to decide whether or not to use commercial pesticide on them. Since vegetable gardens are typically manageable in size because theyre not grown for profit, its easier for people to manage the plot without having to resort to using commercial pesticides. Vegetable gardens also assure you of fresh produce because theres no need to pick the vegetables and refrigerate it. Vegetables stay fresh as long as you dont pick it from your garden, except if it becomes overripe. Aside from health reasons, planting vegetable gardens is also economical because the produce is not going to be as expensive as those that you buy from markets or groceries.

People who have been successful in planting vegetable gardens usually know that you cant keep growing only one type of vegetable in a garden. Its usually more advisable to rotate crops instead of planting only one kind of vegetable year in and out. Rotating crops will make sure that the micro nutrients in the soil will be preserved, and that diseases will not build up in soil particulates.

Planting vegetable gardens take some careful planning on your part, and also an understanding on plant families to know which vegetable types are compatible with each other. These are some examples of groups that can be considered compatible and are safe to be rotated together:

Alliums – onions, leeks, shallots, and the likes Crucifers – such as radishes, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, and the likes Brassicas – brussel sprouts, mustards, cabbages, kale and the likes Legumes – peas and beans Cucurbits – cucumbers, squashes, melons, etcetera Solanaceae – peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and the likes Mescluns – arugula, endive, radiccio, etcetera

Rotating vegetables of the same family would also mean that (more often than not) they would be susceptible to the same kind of pests. This makes pest control a bit more manageable for you since you dont have to adjust to different types of pests for different families of vegetables.

Vegetables such as asparagus, rhubarbs, and other perennial vegetables must not be rotated. They should be planted separately because of this. The more hardy and semi-annual vegetables can be rotated yearly so that no family of vegetables is planted in the same bed for four years. If you have done some planning before planting vegetable gardens, a small plot would like similar to this: four beds for plants that can be rotated, and one bed for perennial, non-rotating plants.

It would also be ideal for people who planning on planting vegetable gardens to spread out the kinds of vegetables they plant so that they dont harvest too much of the same vegetable in one season. You wouldnt want to be stuck with too many cucumbers in one season, would you? Throughout the growing season, try and plant varying types of short-season vegetables so that youll be assured of many different types of vegetables throughout the season.

If you really plan to get the most out of planting vegetable gardens, its best if you do your research first. Check which plants go together, check whether you have enough space to rotate your plants, check which plants you can actually rotate to prevent poisoning and depleting the nutrients of the soil, and spread out the type of vegetables you plant so you wont have too much of the same thing for the whole planting season.

Faking Away Sweets in Sugar

When one speaks of sugar, first thing in mind is the advantage of having a sweet taste of food. It is difficult to find someone who does not like a taste of it, one time or another in a person’s life. It maybe, he refuses intake of it at present for health reasons but in the past he admits, had the joy of eating many kinds of sweet foods.

Children like candies because it is associated with something tasty-sweet. In the earlier days of our grandparents, when people know nothing about calories and disadvantages of some excessive food intakes the elderly finds joy in the thought of having chocolate for breakfast because of the pleasant sweet taste associated when the native chocolate is sweetened with plenty of sugar as a beverage.

Low calorie sweeteners became a household word recently, for reasons that today’s generation is more aware of cases of diabetes and obesity associated with eating excessive sweets. Uncontrolled intake of carbohydrates, which has plenty of starch and sugar, is not advised to people who suffer diabetes, or those prone to obesity.

Researches in the earlier 21st century have proven that low calorie sweeteners had been introduced in the market to substitute the use of actual sugar. Actually some chemical contents are substituted, reduced, or refined to certain degree as to fake the sweet taste in natural sugar. It becomes in a way synthetic, but beneficial to the general health of the public. The faking of the sweet taste reduced the calories present in the actual glucose sugar. It is not surprising that consumers products displayed in the markets today include grocery items on low calorie sweeteners.

Why such preference on the synthetic-made sugar, rather than the organic sweet? Table sugar or sucrose is our common table sugar. There are many kinds of sugar in different sweeteners around, both in fruits and manufactured table sugar. Fruit contains fructose sugar, and milk contains lactose. Reducing or transforming natural-sweet-taste sugar to certain low calorie level is that which makes it more healthful.

Today’s market offers various brands in the making of low calorie sweeteners. The FDA of the United States had an extensive evaluation and test for the assurance of safe use for public consumption. Safety measures against complications in the reproduction; genetic effects, risk to cancer, the central nervous system, and body metabolism were strictly
considered.

Kinds of manufactured low calorie sweeteners:
*Sucralose – the only low calorie sweeter that is made from actual sugar, made 600 times sweeter than our table sugar. It’s available in a very wide range of food distribution with a need of sweetener, branded in the name Splenda (granular and packets) in several outlets. *Aspartame a non-calorie sweetener used in beverages, 200 times sweeter than sugar. They’re several others of similar values.