Gardening Without Plastic

Plastic is a non organic substance which adds nothing to the soil. Plastics cause a lot of trouble if you try to grow crops were they have been buried. In fact some believe that plastics can interfere with plant growth. I have seen where plastic has actually killed the soil by cutting off the air exchange of the soil. One thing is for sure the organic gardener can do very nicely without plastic. When you think about it what could be more unnatural than plastic material mulch? Plastic keeps the soil untouched by sunshine, air, dew, or rainfall. Plastic does nothing to enrich the soil. With an organic mulch it breaks down into compost, humus and minerals. It also lets the air rainfall, dew and sunshine seep through it to the soil beneath.

Of course you will have much more work with an organic mulch. It will have to be replaced at least once a year as it breaks down and nourishes the soil. Plastic will set on the soil for years and do nothing for the soil. It will most most likely damage it almost beyond repair. Hay, straw and leaves make fine organic mulches, old newspapers, brown grocery bags and waste paper make an great underlayment for organic mulch. They provide a barrier to prevent light from reaching weed seeds and stimulating germination. When you work the soil you bring weed seeds to the surface where the the light will stimulate them to germination. A layer of paper with a thick organic mulch on top will stop this from happening and significantly loose time spent pulling weeds. Thus freeing you for the more pleasurable aspects of gardening. Organic mulch can be laid in thick layers to mulch nearly anything. From a box hedge, expensive evergreen border, a perennial bed, or a row of rhododendrons. These are all garden spots that respond well to a paper mulch. If you use a permanent mulch on your vegetable garden, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the absence of weeds. The paper can be covered with something attractive and organic. Such as hay, straw, compost, wooden chips, sawdust or anything else organic. You must cover the paper with something or the wind will scatter them all over the neighborhood.

The plastic industry has been with us for about 35 years now. During that time they have made it the good objective of their research to develop much more and much more indestructible material and more uses of this material. They’re great success, causes an ever growing burden on the sanitation department. This causes extra burden on the tax payers. You can garden just as well or much better without plastic. Even if that were not true. Organic gardeners that are truly worried with environmental contaminants must make up their minds to avoid using as much plastic as possible. It is one of the fastest-growing pollutants of all. A biodegradable plastic material has required the industry to spend a sizable portion of its income on serious research and development. The biodegradable plastics are heavily expensive for anyone to use.

The reports regarding plastic material have been very disturbing, for one thing plastic material is practically indestructible, unless you burn it. Which causes air pollution. It cannot be composted or digested. It is non degradable and incapable of being assimilated into the organic cycle. Our societies obsession with plastic has caused a blight on our land that time will not erase. We need to increase our efforts to improve plastic or decrease the use of it. How much nicer a reflection on our society it would be, if an archaeologist ten thousand years from now would insert a shovel into clean wealthy soil, breathe fresh air, drink pure water. Then name our present society for those characteristics, instead of the litter of plastic material that is fast over burdening us.

Thanks for reading and I hope you had learned something from this article.

You can learn more regarding this subject by visiting my sites below. Just click the links and you will be redirected to my site.

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The author has written more about plastic organizer case here: plastic organizer case

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July 14 2010 | Gardening | No Comments »

Hand Held Bug Zapper

If you are not yet acquainted with the handheld bug zapper, you are really going to love it and if you have used one before, I bet you’ll welcome it back like an old, long-lost friend! The handheld bug killer does just what it says it does: it zaps bugs. But it does it really, very effectively.

Any insect that is touched by the wiring of the hand held insect killer is electrocuted. Smaller insects like midges and mosquitoes are disintegrated with a very pleasing flash and a crack. Larger bug, like house flies and wasps are killed, but don’t explode like the smaller ones.

How many times have these flying bugs taken the edge off an otherwise enjoyable evening in the garden? Or how many times have you not been able to get a good night’s sleep, because you know there’s at least one mosquito in the bedroom. It has happened to me hundreds of times, I know! It is very satisfying to get one’s own back with the electronic insect killer.

I don’t like killing anything unnecessarily – I’m married to a Buddhist- but mosquitoes? I’m sorry, they have to go. And the electric bug zapper does it without any messing about. No waiting and hoping they’ll fly into the ultraviolet light and into the mesh. No, one sweep of the electric bug killer and the mosie’s gone and you can hear whether you got her or not. (I say her, because the sucking mosquitoes always are females – I assure you, I wasn’t being sexist).

There are two basic types of hand held insect killer. There’s the battery operated bug zapper and the rechargeable electric bug zapper. Both work on the same principle, but I prefer the rechargeable kind, although I guess you could use rechargeable batteries too. (I bet they would be more expensive that the bug zapper in the first place). Anyway, I have been using a electronic bug zapper of the rechargeable kind for five years and I am ecstatic about them.

These days, I spend a lot of time in northern Thailand with my wife, so you can bet your life that my handheld bug zapper gets a good work-out practically every evening. We usually eat in the garden in the evening and all socializing is done outside by tradition, especially in the country, where we live, so it comes in very handy. I also use my electric insect zapper to ‘sweep’ the bedroom for bugs before we retire at night, just like a secret agent.

The electric bug killer just gets better and better every time I buy one, which makes it difficult to give you definite specifications. The electronic bug zappers I used four or five years ago, sometimes failed within 6-9 months of purchase, although their ability to hold a charge reduced a lot after 4-5 months.

However, the latest electric bug zapper will easily last 9-12 months and still be very pokey after nine months. My newest one even has a strong light called a headlamp incorporated into it. I’m not certain what it’s supposed to be for, but if you think that vengeance is sweet, you can attract mosquitoes with it and then kill them with your electronic insect killer.

Have you ever used a handheld bug zapper? If you haven’t, or if you are interested in getting a handheld bug zapper, just click one of the hyperlinks to our website or blog. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

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September 11 2009 | Gardening | No Comments »

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