The Benefits of Black Mulch

It's about that time for me to be thinking of transplanting all my tomato and pepper seedlings.  May 20 is our frost free date, so we are pretty much in the clear from frost.  However, just because frost is not a threat cold night time temperatures still are for these heat loving plants.  We've just had a series of 80+ degree days but all that is about to change as a cold front is moving in bringing cooler weather and 40 degree nights as well.

Not to daunted however, I am planning on "cheating" the cold temperatures by using a black mulch on the garden for my tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.  Even if daytime temperatures are nice, these plants like warm soil as well.  Black mulch does the trick.  I will lay the mulch down a good week ahead of planting as I am also trying to avoid surprise spring hailstorms.  I have found that giving the tomatoes the best soil conditions to start in predicts their outcome more than getting them in too early and watch them struggle to thrive. 

 Why mulch?  This is a great question...why should we even bother doing this in the first place?  Mulching certainly has its advantages that make it definitely worth considering.  There are many options when it comes to mulch, like straw, hay, coffee grounds, and other organic materials.  While we use a mix of these materials ( I have sawdust on the paths in the photo above), I want to look especially at this one particular kind.

1. It Warms Up the Soil.  Like I mentioned previously, mulch...specifically black, will warm up your soil temperature providing you with an earlier harvest - anywhere from 7-14 days earlier! (1)  Let's face it.  These Mediterranean plants LOVE the heat and black mulch is a huge help for our summers in Northeast Ohio.  Especially during a cool, wet summer...the mulch helps to give the plants the extra warmth they need to be nice and productive.  Straw, hay and other types of light colored mulch actually cool the soil so you'll want to consider this when choosing a mulch that matches your plants growing conditions.

2.  The Mulch is Moisture Retentive.  I like to use landscape fabric for our mulch as it is water and air permeable yet holds in the moisture too. This is a huge plus for a dry summer or if your area is in drought.  It's another great measure to protect your all important seedlings to make sure you enjoy a premium bounty of fruit.

 3.  It Serves as an Excellent Weed Control.  It's more work to put down the mulch, but it saves LOTS of time later by not having to weed your plants.  There will be a few weeds that poke through the plant holes, but unless you are fighting an especially aggressive weed, black mulch really cuts down on this issue.  I would actually mulch my plants for this reason alone because it's such a huge timesaver in the garden.

Other Benefits of Black Mulch:

1. Minimizes nutrient leaching by shedding excessive rainfall.

2. Helps keep the edible portion of vegetable crops clean, especially pumpkin and other fruiting vegetables.

3. Helps to prevent the transference of soil borne diseases from being splashed up onto the plant.

I have found black mulch to be invaluable in our home garden AND our Community Garden.  We've grown tomatoes with and without it and the mulch makes a huge difference in what the fruit looks like and how much we get.  It's a true garden help.

There are a few disadvantages mostly dealing with the cost of the materials and the time to lay it down.  I often find my fabric, if heavy duty, will last more than one season.  Otherwise, we pay about $15-$20 for a roll that covers most of our small garden space.  We use other more economical mulches that we have around the yard for other areas of the garden and save money that way.

Photo Source

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If you're a beginning gardener or haven't tried using black mulch on your tomatoes, peppers, eggplants as well as squash and melons; here's hoping you'll consider trying it this year and see if it makes a difference in your growing region.  

Blessings!!


References:

1. http://www.extension.org/pages/65191/synthetic-mulching-materials-for-weed-management
2. http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1099
3. http://www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/veg/htms/colrmlch.htm

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How Gardening Can Make You Healthy

The idea of gardening contributing to our health seems on the surface to be a no-brainer but science is discovering different ways how gardening and nature in general can help give us all a better quality of life overall.

When I was a kid I basically only liked 3 foods and vegetables was not one of them.  I'm not sure how I survived on a diet of saltine crackers and American cheese but thankfully I'm still here.  I was very sick a lot though and it all makes sense now when I think what I ate or more like what I didn't eat growing up.

It wasn't my parent's fault either.  They tried their very best to get me to eat veggies and fruit but the canned stuff we were usually served didn't work for me.  My taste buds were enlightened the first time I ate a newly shucked pea from its pod from one of our summer time gardens.  We didn't garden every year but the few times we did I realized that vegetables could actually be tasty. 

Once married and with kiddos; I decided they needed to taste real food from its source and that's when I really plunged into gardening.  I was hooked on growing my own food and that meant I needed to eat this stuff too.  Which I did, although some vegetables took me a long time to like; I persevered on until I grew to love them too.

So how does gardening make you healthy? 

1. Stress Relief.  
Sounds funny when I think of it because weeds can make me feel stressed, but actually a recent study done in the Netherlands showed how it can relieve lots of stress.  Two groups of people after having completed a stressful task were then instructed to either read a book or work in the garden for 30 minutes.  The garden group reported better moods and had lower levels of cortisol than the reading group.1  Pretty amazing, huh?  It turns out that garden activity is a type of "involuntary attention" where we don't have to be intensely focused on a specific task and therefore can relax.  After all, pulling a weed or hoeing isn't rocket science.

2. Better Mental Health. 
"In a study conducted in Norway, people who had been diagnosed with depression, persistent low mood, or "bipolar II disorder" spent six hours a week growing flowers and vegetables.
After three months, half of the participants had experienced a measurable improvement in their depression symptoms. What's more, their mood continued to be better three months after the gardening program ended. The researchers suggest that the novelty of gardening may have been enough to jolt some of the participants out of their doldrums, but some experts have a much more radical explanation for how gardening might ease depression." 2

I know that when I feel anxious or stressed, going out to look at my plants, flowers, what-have-you makes a big difference in how I feel when I come back in from being outside.  But not just the warm sun, gentle breezes and the beautiful colors of nature can affect us, some researchers believe that the soil itself can be healing!

"Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., an assistant professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been injecting mice with Mycobacterium vaccae, a harmless bacteria commonly found in soil, and has found that they increase the release and metabolism of serotonin in parts of the brain that control cognitive function and mood -- much like serotonin-boosting antidepressant drugs do."3

This isn't to say that you should throw away your prescription drugs but to think if you're feeling a bit down or depressed that planting in the soil can help...why not?! 

3. Exercise and Nutrition.

This is a given.  Although the exercise we do in the garden is not cardiovascular, we are moving and that is always beneficial to the body.  The repetitive tasks help to tone muscle and are good low impact exercises.  It's not surprising to hear that many elderly people do well health wise when they maintain a garden of some kind.

Nutrition...well, when you plant the food you pretty much are committed to try to eat it!  And most gardeners eat more vegetables than non-gardeners.  This has to do with access to fresher food and making better food choices.

"Studies of after-school gardening programs suggest that kids who garden are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables. And they're a lot more adventurous about giving new foods a try, says Anne Palmer, who studies food environments as the program director of Eating for the Future, a program based at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future, in Baltimore."4

No room for a garden?  Not a gardener?  Studies have shown that even looking at some form of nature can bring health benefits as well.  Health benefits have been found even when looking at a portrait or photo. 5

"A landmark study by Roger S. Ulrich, published in the April 27, 1984, issue of Science magazine, found strong evidence that nature helps heal. Ulrich, a pioneer in the field of therapeutic environments at Texas A&M University, found that patients recovering from gallbladder surgery who looked out at a view of trees had significantly shorter hospital stays, fewer complaints, and took less pain medication, than those who looked out at a brick wall."6

Pretty amazing stuff, right?  But then again...as gardeners we're not too surprised.  Being connected with nature and being amazed year after year whenever we see newly sprouted seedlings emerge gives us immense joy. It brings back that childlike amazement of new birth which has to be great for our hearts and minds.  It also gives us a tremendous sense of accomplishment...always great for our health.

Hopefully this will inspire you to want to buy a patio tomato, a potted flower or a windowbox of lettuce...of all the health benefits, you'll be eating better for sure!

Blessings!

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1. http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/08/why.gardening.good/index.html
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5.http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/features/gardening-health?page=2
6.http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/features/gardening-health

The Health Benefits of Coffee

 

Coffee.  I've generally found that people either love it or hate it.  For some reason, this bitter brew evokes strong emotions in some; usually more in the "I love coffee" realm than the other.  Of course that's obvious by the abundance of coffee shops that litter the streets of most major cities and a smattering of them in the smaller towns.

 Our very small town/village has a locally owned one that my husband managed and I worked at for 6 years.  We really grew to love and appreciate the rich depths of flavor coffee has and also did some research on its possible benefits.

Benefits?  That's right.  Coffee does have some health perks that go along with it despite a lot of negative press in the past.  More recent studies have shown that coffee can be helpful to your body.

Should everyone drink it?  The purpose of this post is not to make you a coffee drinker as most people don't have to be "made" to love coffee.  It just happens.  Once it starts, coffee is not only a satisfying drink, but one that may just deliver a few helpful benefits as well.  So if you already drink it or are just plain curious, here are a few things I learned...

  

It is important to note that most studies mostly show an association of coffee drinkers with these health benefits.  They aren't direct "cause and effect studies" which show a direct correlation between coffee and the coffee drinker as other factors could affect the outcome of the study.

However, coffee has been with us now since before the 14th century when the Arabs learned how to cultivate and successfully trade the beans. That's a LONG time of usage and it helps to give us some insight into any long term effects of coffee even though most studies will say they "they still don't know the long term impact that coffee has on our health."  

Caffeine is coffee's most obvious draw.  That's a bit obvious.  However, coffee has some other benefits besides caffeine that is now showing up in studies being done on coffee's decaf version.

 

 

Compared to non coffee drinkers:

"A growing body of research shows that coffee drinkers, compared to nondrinkers, are:

• less likely to have type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and dementia
• have fewer cases of certain cancers, heart rhythm problems, and strokes." 1 

Diabetes? 

 

"The vast majority of those studies have shown a benefit of coffee on the prevention of diabetes. And now there is also evidence that decaffeinated coffee may have the same benefit as regular coffee,”  says Frank Hu, MD, MPH, PhD, nutrition and epidemiology professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. 2

"Hu calls the data on coffee and type 2 diabetes "pretty solid," based on more than 15 published studies." 3

How could coffee help keep type 2 diabetes at bay?  It seems like it's a combination of its antioxidants and minerals such as magnesium and calcium which help the body use insulin which in turn regulates blood sugar.  

                                          Heart disease and stroke? 

 Well, when you lower the risk of diabetes, you automatically lower your heart risk...there's one way it helps.  

                                 "And, for women, coffee may mean a lower risk of stroke.
In 2009, a study of 83,700 nurses enrolled in the long-term Nurses' Health Study showed a 20% lower risk of stroke in those who reported drinking two or more cups of coffee daily compared to women who drank less coffee or none at all. That pattern held regardless of whether the women had high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and type 2 diabetes." 4

                                                                        Dementia? 

 According to a study done on clinical mice, coffee was shown to help boost the levels of GCSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor), a growth factor that was shown to help fight off Alzheimer's Disease. 5

                                                                  Certain Cancers?

"A Harvard School of Public Health study shows that men who drink six cups of coffee a day have a 60 percent decreased chance of developing a dangerous form of prostate cancer, as well as a 20 percent decreased chance of developing any other kinds of prostate cancer." 6

"New research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference shows that coffee could help to ward off basal cell carcinoma, (skin cancer) the most common cancer in the world." 7

 

These recent studies are sure to encourage coffee drinkers everywhere and make us sigh with a bit of relief when indulging in a cup of our favorite dark roast.  

1. Just remember, these results are conducted on plain coffee only...no cream, sugar or syrups.  Not that you can't still achieve some health benefits with them but to remember to go easy on the additives if you plan on getting the best results. 

2. Also, if you have any sensitivities to caffeine in the coffee, try decaf instead. 

3. Keep your coffee consumption reasonable and moderate.  Four to seven cups are considered heavy usage (this can depend on your body size) and can lead to negative effects like sleeplessness, anxiety and irritability as well as other slight health risk factors.8  Listen to your body, it has its way of telling you when enough is enough.

So put on a big smile when you enter your next Starbucks or coffee house and know that a simple cup of coffee will not only make you a little more wide awake, but can help your body out just a bit too...

Blessings!

Are you more of a tea drinker?  Read this post The Health Benefits of Tea.

References:

1. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/coffee-new-health-food
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/coffee-health-benefits_n_1064577.html#slide=440657
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coffee-and-health/AN01354

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Free Kindle Ebook on Home Remedies!

Get this free e-book called, "Homemade Health - Home remedies your grandmother knew - Simple & effective treatments from the pantry (Herbology At Home) by Anke Bialas.  


Found this link on Facebook on a FB page called, "Just Eat Real Food."  It's great to carry around on your Kindle information that is available on the web AND is available for free.  After scanning the book, I found it to have a small section on kitchen herbs and their medicinal uses.  The next section covers the remedies of small ailments from acne to warts, to bee sting to back ache.  It's a great resource to have on hand and I always enjoy reading remedies from a long time ago. 

No matter if you're a novice to home remedies or have been practicing them for years, this is a valuable resource to have on hand...

Click on the link below for your free copy and blessings!

(***Update: At the time of this post, the e-book was free for a limited time.  It's now available for $4.95 if you're still interested.)

Homemade Health - Home Remedies Your Grandmother Knew - Simple Effective Treatments from the Pantry (Herbology at Home) by Anke Bialas

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